dbtoyaml - Database to YAML¶
Name¶
dbtoyaml – extract the schema of a Postgres database in YAML format
Synopsis¶
dbtoyaml [option...] dbname
Description¶
dbtoyaml is a utility for extracting the schema of a
Postgres database to a YAML formatted
specification. By default, the specification is output as a single
output stream, which can be redirected or explicitly sent to a file.
As an alternative, the --multiple-files
option allows you to break
down the specification into multiple files, in general, one for each
object (see Multiple File Output).
Note that JSON is an official subset of YAML version 1.2, so the dbtoyaml output should also be compatible with JSON tools.
A sample of the output format is as follows:
schema public:
owner: postgres
privileges:
- postgres:
- all
- PUBLIC:
- all
table t1:
check_constraints:
t1_c2_check:
columns:
- c2
expression: (c2 > 123)
columns:
- c1:
not_null: true
type: integer
- c2:
type: smallint
- c3:
default: 'false'
type: boolean
- c4:
type: text
foreign_keys:
t1_c2_fkey:
columns:
- c2
references:
columns:
- c21
schema: s1
table: t2
owner: alice
primary_key:
t1_pkey:
columns:
- c1
schema s1:
owner: bob
privileges:
- bob:
- all
- alice:
- all
table t2:
columns:
- c21:
not_null: true
type: integer
- c22:
type: character varying(16)
owner: bob
primary_key:
t2_pkey:
columns:
- c21
privileges:
- bob:
- all
- PUBLIC:
- select
- alice:
- insert:
grantable: true
- delete:
grantable: true
- update:
grantable: true
- carol:
grantor: alice
privs:
- insert
The above should be mostly self-explanatory. The example database has
two tables, named t1
and t2
, the first –owned by user
‘alice’– in the public
schema and the second –owned by user
‘bob’– in a schema named s1
(also owned by ‘bob’).
The columns:
specifications directly under each table list each
column in that table, in the same order as shown by Postgres. The
specifications primary_key:
, foreign_keys:
and
check_constraints:
define PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY and CHECK
constraints for a given table. Additional specifications (not shown)
define unique constraints and indexes.
User ‘bob’ has granted all privileges to ‘alice’ on the s1
schema.
On table t2
, he also granted SELECT to PUBLIC; INSERT, UPDATE and
DELETE to ‘alice’ with GRANT OPTION; and she has in turn granted
INSERT to user ‘carol’.
dbtoyaml currently supports extracting information about nearly all types of Postgres database objects. See API Reference for a list of supported objects.
The behavior and options of dbtoyaml
are patterned after the
pg_dump utility
since it is most analogous to using pg_dump --schema-only
.
Multiple File Output¶
The --multiple-files
option breaks down the output into
multiple files under a given root directory. The root is created if
it does not exist. The root directory name defaults to metadata
in the system configuration file. The location of the root directory
defaults to the configuration item repository.path
or can be
specified using the –repository option (see Configuration
and Common Command Line Options for further details).
The first level contains schema.<name>
subdirectories,
schema.<name>.yaml
files and <objtype>.<name>.yaml
files,
where <name>
is the name of the corresponding objects and
<objtype>
is the type of top-level (non-schema) object. Note that
non-schema refers to Postgres extensions, casts, languages or
foreign data wrappers.
The second level, i.e., the schema.<name>
subdirectories contain
<objtype>.<name>.yaml
files for each object in the particular
schema (but see below for caveats).
Object Name Conflicts¶
The names of Postgres objects can include characters that are not allowed in filesystem object names. The most common example is the division operator (‘/’), but even table names can include non-alphanumeric characters, if the identifiers are quoted.
In addition, one can define two or more objects with the same base
name, e.g., function foo(integer)
and function foo(text)
, or a
table named "My Table"
and another named "my table"
or
"MY TABLE"
. On certain operating systems, i.e., Windows, it is not
possible to create two files in the same directory that differ only in
the case of their characters.
In order to deal with the aforementioned issues, dbtoyaml
places
certain objects in common files and transforms object identifiers so
that they are suitable for use in files and directories. For example,
the information for all user-defined casts are written to the file
cast.yaml
in the root directory. Functions with the same name but
different arguments are written to a single file, e.g.,
function.foo.yaml
in the first example above. Identifiers are
also converted to all lowercase, non-alphanumeric characters
(excluding underscore) are converted to underscores and, by default,
schema object names are truncated to 32 characters.
If two object names, thus transformed, map to the same string, then
the objects’ information is written to the same file, e.g.,
table.my_table.yaml
in the second example above. If you prefer to
change the default truncation length, please define the environment
variable PYRSEAS_MAX_IDENT_LEN
to some integer value (up to 63).
Version Control and Dropped Objects¶
It is expected that the output of dbtoyaml --multiple-files
will
be placed under version control. Further invocations should then
update the files in the same directory tree. However, if an object is
dropped from the database dbtoyaml
would normally only output
files for new or changed objects–and thus keep the dropped object
file under version control. To deal with dropped objects, dbtoyaml
-m
outputs a special YAML “index” file, named
database.<dbname>.yaml
in the root directory. When dbtoyaml
-m
is run a second time, it looks for this “index” file and if
found, proceeds to delete the previous run’s .yaml
files before
outputting new ones.
Options¶
dbtoyaml accepts the following command-line arguments (in addition to the Common Command Line Options):
dbname
Specifies the name of the database whose schema is to be extracted.
-
-m
,
--multiple-files
¶
Extracts the schema to a two-level directory tree. See Multiple File Output above.
-
-n
<schema>
¶ -
--schema
<schema>
¶ Extracts only a schema matching schema. By default, all schemas are extracted. Multiple schemas can be extracted by using multiple
-n
switches. Note that normally all objects that belong to the schema are extracted as well, unless excluded otherwise.
-
-N
<schema>
¶ -
--exclude-schema
<schema>
¶ Does not extract schema matching schema. This can be given more than once to exclude several schemas.
-
-O
,
--no-owner
¶
Do not output object ownership information. By default, as seen in the sample output above, database objects (schemas, tables, etc.) that can be owned by some user, are shown with an “owner: username” element. The
-O
switch suppresses all those lines.NOTE: If you specify –no-owner, you will most likely also want to specify
--no-privileges
. If the former is used without the latter the resulting YAML output will have privilege information without user data, which will cause errors if the YAML is then fed to yamltodb - YAML to Database.
-
-t
<table>
¶ -
--table
<table>
¶ Extract only tables matching table. Multiple tables can be extracted by using multiple
-t
switches. Note that selecting a table may cause other objects, such as an owned sequence, to be extracted as well
-
-T
<table>
¶ -
--exclude-table
<table>
¶ Do not extract tables matching table. Multiple tables can be excluded by using multiple
-T
switches.
-
-x
,
--no-privileges
¶
Do not output access privilege information. By default, as seen in the sample output above, if specific GRANTs have been issued on various objects (schemas, tables, etc.), the privileges are shown under each object. The
-x
switch suppresses all those lines.See also the NOTE under
--no-owner
.
Examples¶
To extract a database called moviesdb
into a file:
dbtoyaml moviesdb > moviesdb.yaml
To extract only the schema named store
:
dbtoyaml --schema=store moviesdb > moviesdb.yaml
To extract the tables named film
and genre
:
dbtoyaml -t film -t genre moviesdb -o moviesdb.yaml
To extract objects, to standard output, except those in schemas
product
and store
:
dbtoyaml -N product -N store moviesdb
To extract objects to a directory under version control:
dbtoyaml moviesdb -m movies/dbspec