PostgreSQL Backups

Overview

Spawn currently supports two formats of PostgreSQL backups:

• Plain
• Custom

You can read more about these in the PostgreSQL documentation.

Depending on the type of pg_dump backup you create, your data image definition file will require different configuration.

Plain

Plain backups are the default type. If you omit the format value in the data image definition file, Spawn will assume the postgres backup is of the "plain" format.

For plain backups, you'll need to specify the following items in the data image definition file:

• folder
• file
• format

folder

This value should point to the folder on disk that contains the file created by pg_dump, relative to your data image definition file.

file

This value should contain the file produced by pg_dump. This file must be present in the folder specified by folder.

format

This should contain the string plain to signify the backup format is of type "plain".

Example

An example data image definition file would look like this:

name: PostgresPgDumpPlain
engine: postgresql
sourceType: backup
backup:
  folder: /home/spawn/pgdump/plain/
  file: database.dump.sql
  format: plain

This will create a PostgreSQL data image called PostgresPgDumpPlain from a plain pg_dump backup.

The backup file is located in the /home/spawn/pgdump/plain/ directory, and is called database.dump.sql.

Custom

Custom backups are restored with the --no-owner flag enabled. This means all objects restored will be owned by the auto generated spawn admin user. If you need to, you may change the ownership of objects in subsequent data containers created from this image.

For custom backups, there's some additional configuration required. You'll need to specify the following items in the data image definition file:

• folder
• file
• format
• initialDatabaseName

folder

This value should point to the folder on disk that contains the file created by pg_dump, relative to your data image definition file.

file

This value should contain the file produced by pg_dump. This file must be present in the folder specified by folder.

format

This should contain the string custom to signify the backup format is of type "custom".

initialDatabaseName

This value should contain the name of the database you've backed up through pg_dump.

Example

An example data image definition file would look like this:

name: PostgresPgDumpCustom
engine: postgresql
sourceType: backup
backup:
  folder: /home/spawn/pgdump/custom/
  file: TodoList.dump
  format: custom
initialDatabaseName: TodoList

This will create a PostgreSQL data image called PostgresPgDumpCustom from a custom pg_dump backup.

The backup file is located in the /home/spawn/pgdump/custom/ directory, and is called TodoList.dump.

The database dump was generated by invoking pg_dump on a database called TodoList. As such, we must also specify the initialDatabaseName to be TodoList to ensure the dump can be restored to a database of the same name.