postgis_restore(1)

💖 postgis_restore(1) 💖

okay bestie, so this is postgis_restore, and it lives in the PostGIS manual, section 1. it's a lil script that pulls your data back out of a dump file, and it's about to become your whole personality. no cap.

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✨ NAME ✨

postgis_restore — restore a PostGIS database from an archive file created by pg_dump

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🌸 SYNTAX 🌸

postgis_restore [-v] [-L TOC] [-s schema] dumpfile

like. that's the whole vibe. you give it a dumpfile and it does the thing 🫶

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the postgis_restore command lets you extract SQL statements that re-create all the objects hanging out in a custom dump of a PostGIS-enabled database… while skipping the PostGIS specific objects. it's giving "here's your stuff, minus the PostGIS internals." 💅

this is only useful for dumps of databases where PostGIS got enabled by loading the postgis.sql script. iykyk.

⚠️ if your dump came from a database where PostGIS was enabled via CREATE EXTENSION, that dump will not have PostGIS objects in it at all — so it's totally safe to restore it directly using pg_restore. no detour needed, bestie.

also, heads up fr fr: this command only works with dumps using the custom format, which are the ones you make with pg_dump -Fc. any other format? not it. 😭

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🎀 USAGE 🎀

run the script with no arguments and it'll print usage information for you. it's polite like that. ✨

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

step 1 — create a custom dump from olddb:

pg_dump -Fc olddb > olddb.dump

step 2 — create a new database newdb:

createdb newdb

step 3 — PostGIS-enable the new database:

psql -c 'CREATE EXTENSION postgis' newdb

step 4 — restore your data (the main character moment):

postgis_restore.pl olddb.dump | psql newdb

ate. no crumbs. 👑

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

originally written by Sandro Santilli <strk@kbt.io>. absolute icon behavior.

more information is available at http://postgis.net 🌈

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so yeah — that's the whole page, straight from the PostGIS manual, section 1, and the page you just read is literally titled postgis_restore(1). mwah. go restore something. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶