Migrating Django databases

I started out a few Django projects using SQLite as the DB backend a while back, and decided to upgrade them to PostgreSQL. Turns out using the manage.py dumpdata and loaddata, the switch can be fairly smooth. The steps turned out to be something like:

  • Create empty database in PostgreSQL

  • Copy the existing project's settings.py to a new_settings.py

  • Edit new_settings.py to replace the SQLite connection info with PgSQL info.

  • Run ./manage.py syncdb --settings=new_settings (note that there's not a '.py' at the end of that parameter) to create the PgSQL tables (and also test the connection info). Say 'no' when asked if you want to create a user.

  • Run ./manage.py dbshell --settings=new_settings to get into the psql shell, to clean out a few tables populated by syncdb

    • delete from auth_permission;
    • delete from django_content_type;

  • Dump the data from the old DB backend with: ./manage.py dumpdata >olddata.json

  • Load the data into the new DB backend with: ./manage.py loaddata --settings=new_settings olddata.json

  • Swap the settings files: mv settings.py old_settings.py; mv new_settings.py settings.py

  • Restart the server

Barring any complications, the entire switch can take just a few minutes. Of course, for anything you really care about you'd do some more testing before going live, but that's up to you.