How to pass in password to pg_dump?

Question

I\'m trying to create a cronjob to back up my database every night before something catastrophic happens. It looks like this command should meet my needs:

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Answer 1

For a one-liner, like migrating a database you can use --dbname followed by a connection string (including the password) as stated in the pg_dump manual

In essence.

pg_dump --dbname=postgresql://username:password@127.0.0.1:5432/mydatabase

Note: Make sure that you use the option --dbname instead of the shorter -d and use a valid URI prefix, postgresql:// or postgres://.

The general URI form is:

postgresql://[user[:password]@][netloc][:port][/dbname][?param1=value1&...]

Best practice in your case (repetitive task in cron) this shouldn't be done because of security issues. If it weren't for .pgpass file I would save the connection string as an environment variable.

export MYDB=postgresql://username:password@127.0.0.1:5432/mydatabase

then have in your crontab

0 3 * * * pg_dump --dbname=$MYDB | gzip > ~/backup/db/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).psql.gz