Copy data from Heroku Postgres into local database

import-db.sh

# copy/import data from heroku postgres to localhost pg database

# useful for copying admin's work on live site into local database to reproduce errors
# https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-import-export

# take heroku pg snapshot and download
heroku pg:backups:capture
heroku pg:backups:download

# load the dump into local postgres database, assuming $DATABASE_URL set locally
pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -d $DATABASE_URL latest.dump

rm latest.dump

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# copy/import from local database into heroku DB

# dump your local database into a sql file
pg_dump $DATABASE_URL > dump.sql

# import it into the heroku database
psql $(heroku config:get DATABASE_URL) < dump.sql


# remove the dump
rm dump.sql

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# if you get a server version mismatch, like this
> pg_dump $DATABASE_URL > dump.sql
pg_dump: error: server version: 16.6; pg_dump version: 12.22 (Ubuntu 12.22-0ubuntu0.20.04.2)
pg_dump: error: aborting because of server version mismatch

# you can run pg_dump with the correct "server" version using docker
docker run postgres:{SERVER_VERSION_FROM_ERROR_MESSAGE} pg_dump $DATABASE_URL > dump.sql

# for example:
docker run postgres:16.6 pg_dump $DATABASE_URL > dump.sql

via https://stackoverflow.com/a/39926357/625840 

This comes in handy, yet again!

FYI, heroku config:get DATABASE_URL outputs the value without need for grep or sed

it's need to update, now you need to add -a <app_name> at the end of those heroku capture and heroku download command

@patcoll good tip, thanks!

@JeffrySan i believe if you're in the app's directory (inside the git repo) you don't need to specify the app with -a

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the simplest version of this process is simply

pg_dump $OLD_DATABASE_URL > dump.sql
psql  $NEW_DATABASE_URL < dump.sql
rm dump.sql

instructions for sqlite, via: https://alexwlchan.net/2025/copying-sqlite-databases/

dump the database to a text file (often much smaller than the actual DB, since it simply describes the indexes, instead of containing all of the data for the indexes:

sqlite3 my_database.db .dump > my_database.db.txt


reconstruct the DB locally

cat my_database.db.txt | sqlite3 my_reconstructed_database.db