sql - Skip certain tables with mysqldump

Question

Is there a way to restrict certain tables from the mysqldump command?

For example, I'd use the following syntax to dump only table1 and table2:

mysqldump -u username -p database table1 table2 > database.sql

But is there a similar way to dump all the tables except table1 and table2? I haven't found anything in the mysqldump documentation, so is brute-force (specifying all the table names) the only way to go?

Answer 1

You can use the --ignore-table option. So you could do

mysqldump -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASE --ignore-table=DATABASE.table1 > database.sql

There is no whitespace after -p (this is not a typo).

To ignore multiple tables, use this option multiple times, this is documented to work since at least version 5.0.

If you want an alternative way to ignore multiple tables you can use a script like this:

#!/bin/bash
PASSWORD=XXXXXX
HOST=XXXXXX
USER=XXXXXX
DATABASE=databasename
DB_FILE=dump.sql
EXCLUDED_TABLES=(
table1
table2
table3
table4
tableN   
)
 
IGNORED_TABLES_STRING=''
for TABLE in "${EXCLUDED_TABLES[@]}"
do :
   IGNORED_TABLES_STRING+=" --ignore-table=${DATABASE}.${TABLE}"
done

echo "Dump structure"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} --single-transaction --no-data --routines ${DATABASE} > ${DB_FILE}

echo "Dump content"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} ${DATABASE} --no-create-info --skip-triggers ${IGNORED_TABLES_STRING} >> ${DB_FILE}