How to create a backup of a single table in a postgres database?

Is there a way to create a backup of a single table within a database using postgres? And how? Does this also work with the pg_dump command?


Use --table to tell pg_dump what table it has to backup:

pg_dump --host localhost --port 5432 --username postgres --format plain --verbose --file "<abstract_file_path>" --table public.tablename dbname

If you are on Ubuntu,

  1. Login to your postgres user sudo su postgres
  2. pg_dump -d <database_name> -t <table_name> > file.sql

Make sure that you are executing the command where the postgres user have write permissions (Example: /tmp)

Edit

If you want to dump the .sql in another computer, you may need to consider skipping the owner information getting saved into the .sql file.

You can use pg_dump --no-owner -d <database_name> -t <table_name> > file.sql


pg_dump -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres -d mydb -t my_table > backup.sql

You can take the backup of a single table but I would suggest to take the backup of whole database and then restore whichever table you need. It is always good to have backup of whole database.

9 ways to use pg_dump


If you prefer a graphical user interface, you can use pgAdmin III (Linux/Windows/OS X). Simply right click on the table of your choice, then "backup". It will create a pg_dump command for you.

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