Sure, you can point and laugh about why we’re not using a better database, like maybe PostgreSQL, but since our sites are based on WordPress, we’re stuck with MySQL and have to make the best of it.
Luckily I remembered that command-line arguments exist, and looked to see if there was a way to export only a single table using mysqldump, and sure enough, there was. The syntax goes like this:
Of course that example sucks, so here’s a better one — if you want to backup only the wp_users table from your WordPress database named wordpressdb, you’d do something closer to this, which would export it all into a file called users.bak.
You’d want to replace User, Password, and Hostname with the values from your wp-config, of course.
If you wanted to export multiple tables — for instance, if you realized you probably need wp_usermeta if you’re going to export wp_users — you would simply add that to the command:
To import that backup later on, transfer it wherever you want to use it, and run something like this:
And that’s the story of how one table was exported and my local database is now up to date.
