Backing Up Your Database With MAMP

Craft relies on the mysqldump command being available to the PHP process (via exec()) to create database backups.

This is the most reliable way to dump a database (large or small) without hitting resource limits. The problem for MAMP users, however, is that its mysql and mysqldump executables are not available to the PHP process during HTTP requests.

Craft provides two configuration settings to help with this: backupCommand and restoreCommand.

You can set these directly via environment overrides, so there’s no need to touch general.php or any other project files.

CRAFT_BACKUP_COMMAND="/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql80/bin/mysqldump -h localhost -u root -proot --add-drop-table --comments --create-options --dump-date --no-autocommit --routines --set-charset --triggers --single-transaction --no-data --result-file=\"{file}\" {database} && /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqldump -h localhost -u root -proot --add-drop-table --comments --create-options --dump-date --no-autocommit --routines --set-charset --triggers --no-create-info --ignore-table={database}.assetindexdata --ignore-table={database}.assettransformindex --ignore-table={database}.cache --ignore-table={database}.sessions --ignore-table={database}.templatecaches --ignore-table={database}.templatecachecriteria --ignore-table={database}.templatecacheelements --ignore-table={database}.templatecachequeries {database} >> \"{file}\""

CRAFT_RESTORE_COMMAND="/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql80/bin/mysql -h localhost -u root -proot {database} < \"{file}\""

Copy and paste these variables exactly as they appear above into your .env file, each on their own line. If you changed your MySQL password via MAMP’s preferences, find and replace -proot with -pyourpassword.

These commands replace Craft’s defaults by using the full filesystem path to MAMP’s own mysql and mysqldump executables (/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql80/bin/mysqldump).

Using a Closure #

As of Craft 5.1 and 4.9, you can set backupCommand and restoreCommand to a closure in general.php and modify only the base executable path:

use craft\config\GeneralConfig;
use craft\helpers\App;

return GeneralConfig::create()
    // ...

    ->backupCommand(function($cmd) {
        return $cmd->setCommand('/Applications/MAMP/Libary/bin/mysql80/bin/mysqlbackup');
    })
;

This allows Craft to continue using all its default flags and connection details. To make this compatible with other environments, you can check a variable before overriding the command:

use craft\config\GeneralConfig;
use craft\helpers\App;

return GeneralConfig::create()
    // ...

    ->backupCommand(function($cmd) {
        if (App::env('USE_MAMP')) {
            $cmd->setCommand('/Applications/MAMP/Libary/bin/mysql80/bin/mysqlbackup');
        }

        return $cmd;
    })
;

Then, in your local .env file, add this variable:

USE_MAMP="true"

In environments where this variable is not defined, the command will be passed through, unmodified!