Django dumpdata

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Django dumpdata command to export the database into files.

Introduction to the Django dumpdata command #

Sometimes, you want to move some common data from a test database to the production database.

To do that you use the dumpdata command to export data in the test database into a file and import it to the production database using the loaddata command.

The dumpdata command has many options that allow you to:

• Export all model instances of all the apps (the whole database) into a file.
• Export all model instances of an app into a file.
• Export some model instances (some tables in the database) into a file.

The format of the output file can be xml, json, jsonl, or yaml. The following dump the whole database into a data.json file:

python manage.py dumpdata > data.jsonCode language: Python (python)

If you open the data.json file, you’ll see lots of data. For example, the following shows the Employee’s instance:

...
{
    "model": "hr.employee",
    "pk": 5,
    "fields": {
      "first_name": "John",
      "last_name": "Doe",
      "contact": null,
      "department": 1,
      "compensations": [1, 2]
    }
  },
...Code language: Python (python)

The sample model contains the following information:

• The model name (hr.employee).
• The primary key value (pk).
• The fields (first_name, last_name, contact, department, and compensations) of the Employee model.

If you want to export the whole database to another format like XML, you need to specify the format option:

python manage.py dumpdata > filename --format file_formatCode language: Python (python)

The file_format can be json, jsonl, xml, and yaml.

For example, the following command exports the whole database into an XML file:

python manage.py dumpdata > data.xml --format xmlCode language: Python (python)

Exporting data from a specific app #

To export data of a specific app, you specify the app name:

python manage.py dumpdata app_name > filename.jsonCode language: Python (python)

For example, the following command exports the model instances of the hr app:

python manage.py dumpdata hr > hr.jsonCode language: Python (python)

Exporting data from a specific model #

To dump the data of a specific table, you specify the app name and model name as follows:

python manage.py app_name.model_name > filenameCode language: Python (python)

For example, the following command dumps all the instances of the Employee table in the HR application:

python manage.py dumpdata hr.employee > hr_employee.jsonCode language: Python (python)

Exporting data by excluding one or more models #

Sometimes, you want to export data from all models except for one or more models. In this case, you can use the --exclude option:

python manage.py --exclude app_name.model_name > filenameCode language: Python (python)

Note that the command may contain multiple --exclude options so that you can exclude multiple models.

For example, the following export data from the whole database except for the contact model:

python manage.py --exclude hr.contact > data.jsonCode language: Python (python)

The following command exports data from the whole database except for the contact and department models:

python manage.py --exclude hr.contact --exclude department > data.jsonCode language: Python (python)

Summary #

• Use the Django dumpdata command to export data of one or more models.