Today I Learned

hashrocket A Hashrocket project

Supercharge Your Script with psql -c 🥞

Want to execute a PostgreSQL command from the command line? You can! The --command or -c flag takes a string argument that will be executed on your database of choice.

I've been using it as part of a script that creates a remote database backup, downloads the backup, drops and creates a local database, dumps the database backup into the local database, and then runs a select statement on the dataset. That final command looks like this (query has been simplified):

$ psql -d tilex_prod_backup -c "select count(*) from posts";

 count
-------
  2311
(1 row)
See More #sql TILs
Looking for help? Hashrocket developers believe that data quality is as important as code quality. We enjoy all the challenges of relational databases, from finding the fastest index, to structuring data to fit the needs of an application. We're eager to share our experiences; check out PG Casts, our series of free PostgreSQL screencasts.