BrianDouglas.ie - Creating a database dump with SQLite

For one reason or another you may want to dump your sqlite data into an sql file.

A database dump can be used to import and export sql data. As with most things it is a trivial task with SQLite.

Exporting data

sqlite3 database.db .dump > database_dump_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).sql

The above command dumps the database to a new .sql file that is timestamped. I like to use the following timestamp format YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.

An exported sql file can then be imported into a sqlite database like so.

sqlite3 database.db < database_dump_20250216_100802.sql