This simple command can be run from a terminal to export data (and schema) to a local file from the Docker database container. This assumes that data only lives within the container and is not persisted using a Docker Volume. You might have a configuration like this for local development or testing.
docker exec -t <Database Server Container Name> pg_dumpall -c -s -U <Database User> > <host/location/and/filename>
In practice the command will look something like this:
docker exec -t my-db pg_dumpall -c -s -U db-user > ./export.sql
Breakdown of pg_dumpall flags:
| Flag : | : Meaning |
|---|---|
| -c | Include SQL commands to clean (drop) databases before recreating them. DROP commands for roles and tablespaces are added as well. |
| -s | Dump only the object definitions (schema), not data. |
| -U | Username of database user with export access |
Additional pg_dumpall configuration options