Importing a SQL/JSON database

[evbernardes]

Hello, everyone!
I'm new to Monica but after trying the hosted version a bit, I really liked it. Now I have a self-hosted Docker container on Linux.
Thing is, while I managed to export all the data I added to the hosted version, there's no option to import them, only with Contact Cards but they don't import everything.

What is the best way to just import everything? And how to use this functionality to keep a backup of the database?

Thanks in advance!

[eboelens]

I have the same question Thanks in advance!

[catanzaromj]

I'm not quite sure what your export looks like, but I was able to do this recently. However, I started from a .sql file that I generated using mysqldump on the database, rather than the in-app export.

But if you somehow have a .sql lying around like I did, here's what you can try. Starting from a fresh monica installation (I didn't even make an admin account or anything), launch the docker container but add an additional volume mount to the db service for the directory containing the backup .sql file. Connect to the mysql/mariadb container that you now have running, cd to /var/lib/mysql (or where your db is mounted in the container) and then restore the db from there. I used a command like mariadb -u <MYSQL_USER> monica -p < backup.sql. I then entered <MYSQL_PASSWORD> when prompted, where the <MYSQL_...> are from your docker (compose) file. You can read more about restoring from dump files here https://mariadb.com/kb/en/restoring-data-from-dump-files/