Automatic database backup

I use git extensively for version control.  Its nice to use git since it backs up the code, but the database still remains unversioned.  Well, thankfully, XAMPP has a script that does a database dump.  So, I wrote a script to do the dump and then commit it to git.

Big Ben by vgm8383 on flickr. Used under Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license

Step 1
Create a directory in the home directory for the database dump

~$ mkdir projectname-database
~$ cd projectname-database


Step 2
Initialize git in the directory

~$ git init


Step 3
Do a database dump for the initial commit

~$ /./opt/lampp/bin/mysqldump -u root database-name > database.sql


Step 4
Commit the database file

~$ git add .
~$ git commit -a -m "Initial database commit"


Step 5
Now we’ll write a script to do the database dump and add commits. Open your favorite text editor and write the following script. Save the file as probably “database-project” in your home folder

#!/bin/bash
/opt/lampp/bin/./mysqldump -u root database-name > /home/username/projectname-database/database.sql
cd /home/username/projectname-database/
git commit -a -m "Database dump at `date`"

Save the script so that you can run it via a cron.

Step 6
Open crontab with the following command

~$ crontab -e


Step 7
Add the following line

00,30 * * * * /home/username/./database-project

This cron will run the script every 30 minutes.

Basically what happens here is the database dump will be taken every 30 minutes and the change will be committed to a git repository allowing you to keep track of the overwriting. I’ve found it quite useful and I hope you will too.

Baking on Ubuntu while using xampp

So, I’m a web developer working on Ubuntu.  Since I don’t want to get into complications like pinning to have earlier versions of PHP (useful when developing on Drupal), I use XAMPP.  Its a bit of a work to get php ready to bake while using XAMPP on Ubuntu.  These instructions are probably generic to any bash shell, but tested and working on Ubuntu.  Also note, I assume you install XAMPP in the expected directory at /opt/lampp

Step 1:  Add an alias for php in .bashrc.  Open the ~/.bashrc file and add the following line
alias php='/opt/lampp/bin/php'

Step 2: When running the bake script, run it as follows
php cake.php bake