[Django]-What's the best way to migrate a Django DB from SQLite to MySQL?

89👍

Execute:

python manage.py dumpdata > datadump.json

Next, change your settings.py to the mysql database.

Finally:

python manage.py loaddata datadump.json

74👍

After some hard searching I got several problems that I hope future answer looking people will find useful.

my formula is

  1. python manage.py dumpdata > datadump.json
  2. Change settings.py to your mysql
  3. Make sure you can connect on your mysql (permissions,etc)
  4. python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb
  5. Exclude contentype data with this snippet in shell

    python manage.py shell

    from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
    ContentType.objects.all().delete()
    quit()

  6. python manage.py loaddata datadump.json

Hope that will help you!

11👍

This is a neater way to avoid the ContentType issues described elsewhere:

./manage.py dumpdata --exclude contenttypes --exclude auth.permission --exclude sessions --indent 2 > dump.json

Then:

./manage.py loaddata dump.json

2👍

A (fuller) list of the steps I needed for moving from sqlite to MySQL, YMMV:

  1. python manage.py dumpdata > datadump.json
  2. Make sure you can connect on your mysql (permissions, etc)
  3. Make sure you HAVE PRIVILEGES to modify FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS (I had to install and run my own private instance of mysql for that)
  4. Make sure InnoDB engine is NOT used (use MyISAM in every table) or the next step won’t work (failing silently)!
  5. Relax validation by this command (this won’t take effect in InnoDB):
    SET GLOBAL FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0;
  6. Load django_site.sql table separately (if using contrib.sites)
  7. Change settings.py to your new mysql
  8. python manage.py migrate –run-syncdb
  9. Fix syncdb errors errors by tinkering with the code in /migrations directories of your Django apps and the DB tables as necessary
  10. Exclude contentype data with this snippet (can put it in the main urls.py module):
    from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
    ContentType.objects.all().delete()
    quit()
  11. If need editing json data have to prettify it first:
    cat datadump.json | python -m json.tool > datadump_pretty.json
  12. python manage.py loaddata datadump.json
  13. Fix any data truncation issues
  14. Add timezone data to the database:
    mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -D mysql -P 1234 -u root -p --protocol=tcp
    mysql -P 1234 -u root -p -e "flush tables" --protocol=tcp
  15. Test the site is working without submitting any data
  16. SET GLOBAL FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 1;
  17. Test the rest

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