Convert mysqldump to psql

Upload a .sql file and get back a psql SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.

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CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)

How your data is typed in psql

Generated from the converter's own psql type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.

Your datapsql type
Whole numberBIGINT
Decimal (money)NUMERIC(10,2)
Floating pointDOUBLE PRECISION
True / falseBOOLEAN
DateDATE
Date and timeTIMESTAMP
Short textTEXT
Long textTEXT
Binary dataBYTEA

Working from a mysqldump file

mysqldump writes a plain-text .sql file with a very consistent shape, which makes it one of the easiest dumps to read: its own syntax announces the dialect, and its rows are inline rather than in a separate archive.

  • Every mysqldump file contains ENGINE=InnoDB or AUTO_INCREMENT, which is exactly what the dialect detection looks for, so backtick-quoted identifiers and MySQL types parse without you choosing anything.
  • mysqldump packs many rows into one extended INSERT by default, and each tuple in it becomes a row, so there is no need to dump again with --skip-extended-insert.
  • The file is decoded as UTF-8 with unreadable bytes replaced, so a legacy latin1 dump arrives with damaged accented text. Dump with --default-character-set=utf8mb4, or run the file through iconv first.
  • mysqldump --tab is not a dump at all: the schema goes to a .sql file and the rows to headerless tab-separated .txt files. Neither half is convertible on its own, and the data files have no header row to name their columns, so dump again without --tab.

Running the script through psql

psql is PostgreSQL's command-line client rather than the database itself, and the script is written to be fed straight into it. Everything here is about the tool you run, not about the server you run it against.

  • From inside a session already open, \i dump.sql runs the file without leaving the prompt. The script contains no backslash meta-commands of its own, so nothing in it can collide with yours.
  • There is no BEGIN and no COMMIT anywhere in the file. Statements commit as they go, so a failure halfway leaves the tables already created: pass -1 to wrap the whole load in a single transaction, or -v ON_ERROR_STOP=1 to stop at the first error instead of carrying on past it.
  • The script switches standard_conforming_strings on itself instead of trusting the server default, so it behaves identically against a session that has been moved off it.
  • It sets client_encoding to UTF8 for the same reason. The file is written as UTF-8 with nothing to announce that, and psql would otherwise decode it using whatever the client locale says.

Reading mysqldump

  • Parsed with a real SQL parser, not regular expressions, so a value containing a closing parenthesis or a semicolon cannot split a row in half.
  • CREATE TABLE types, primary keys, NOT NULL and AUTO_INCREMENT are all read from the dump.
  • The source dialect is detected from the dump itself — MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server dumps all parse.

Writing psql

  • Backslashes are left alone, because PostgreSQL treats them as ordinary characters — doubling them would corrupt every Windows path.
  • Auto-increment columns become GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY.
  • Binary data is written as bytea, and identifiers respect the 63-character limit.

What you get

A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.

Load this dump into PostgreSQL:

  psql -U USER -d DATABASE -f dump.sql

Create the database first if it does not exist:

  createdb -U USER DATABASE

Questions

Is converting mysqldump to psql free?
Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
Will my mysqldump data keep its types in psql?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real psql types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
Do you store my file?
No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.

This conversion, under other names

Convert mysqldump to something else

Convert something else to psql