Exporting a MySQL Database from a Docker Container

When running MySQL inside a Docker container, you can easily export a database using mysqldump. This is useful for backups, migrations, or moving data between environments.

Step 1: Identify the container and database

First, list your running containers to confirm the MySQL container name:

docker ps

For example, assume your container is named bedrock_db and the database you want to export is ghost_db.

Step 2: Export the database

Run the following command to export the database to a SQL file on your host machine:

docker exec bedrock_db mysqldump -u root -p'YOUR_PASSWORD' ghost_db > ghost_db_backup.sql

• Replace YOUR_PASSWORD with the MySQL root password.
• Replace ghost_db with the name of your database.
• ghost_db_backup.sql will be created in your current directory.

Step 3: Verify the export

Check that the file was created and contains SQL statements:

ls -lh ghost_db_backup.sql
head -n 20 ghost_db_backup.sql

The SQL dump can now be imported into another MySQL instance or stored as a backup.