mysqldumptab

A console tool that dumps MySQL tables as whatever-separated data.

TL;DR;

mysqldump --tab actually calls SELECT * INTO OUTFILE on the server, so it's not really useful when you need to dump a table from a remote server.

mysqldumptab leverages that as it dumps a table in the exact same format as SELECT INTO OUTFILE but does that on the client side.

Dependencies

A compiler.

MySQL client libraries and build-essential or devel, depending on your OS.

Installation

Just like any software that comes with configure scripts:

./bootstrap
./configure --disable-shared --prefix=/usr/local
make install clean

Tweaking

The configure script provides several options for tweaking:

Option	Description
--disable-shared	Link the resulting binary against static libraries only. Recommended.
--with-mysql-config	Provide an alternate path to mysql_config.
--with-buffer-block-size=VAL	Set the growing output buffer block size to VAL. The default value is 0x4000 (16KB).

Usage

Some options like -uphPs are the same as mysqldump.

If you pass -p with no argument, you'll get a password prompt.

Options that take characters support hex format - --fields-escaped-by=0x5c.

Usage:
  mysqldumptab [options] <database> <table>

Options:
  -u, --username                    set mysql user []
  -p, --password                    set mysql password []
  -h, --host                        set mysql host [localhost]
  -P, --port                        set mysql port [3306]
  -s, --socket                      set mysql socket
  -C, --charset                     set connection character set [UTF8]
  -o, --output-file                 write output to file instead of stdout

  -H, --help                        display this help and exit
  -V, --version                     print version information and exit
  -M, --mysql-info                  print mysql client version and exit

  -B, --buffer                      buffer query result set
  -S, --select                      fields to select
  -W, --where                       where clause
  -O, --order                       order by
  -G, --group                       group by
  -A, --having                      having clause

  --fields-terminated-by            terminate output fields with the given string
  --fields-enclosed-by              enclose output fields with the given character
  --fields-optionally-enclosed-by   optionally enclose output fields with the given character
  --fields-escaped-by               escape output fields with the given character
  --lines-terminated-by             terminate lines with the given string

Compatibility

mysqldumptab aims to be 100% compatible with the output SELECT INTO OUTFILE produces.

If not, please file a bug.

Speed

Speed comparisons are rather subjective but when running on the same host, mysqldumptab is ~25% faster than mysqldump and SELECT INTO OUTFILE.

# mysqldump -uroot test_db table_with_500k_records > out.sql
real    0m1.810s
user    0m1.608s
sys     0m0.178s

# mysqldump -uroot --tab=out test_db table_with_500k_records
real    0m1.810s
user    0m0.006s
sys     0m0.002s

# mysqldumptab -uroot test_db table_with_500k_records > out.tab
real    0m1.333s
user    0m0.590s
sys     0m0.216s

Bugs

!@#$