transfer db from one heroku app to another faster - ruby-on-rails

Question

Is there a faster way to transfer my production database to a test app?
Currently I'm doing a heroku db:pull to my local machine then heroku db:push --app testapp but this is becoming time consuming. I have some seed data but it is not nearly as accurate as simply testing with my real-world data. And since they're both stored on a neighboring AWS cloud, there must be a faster way to move the data?
I thought about using a heroku bundle, but I noticed the animate command is gone?
bundles:animate <bundle> # animate a bundle into a new app

Answer 1

It's quite common to migrate databases between staging, testing and production environments for Rails Apps. And heroku db:pull/push is painfully slow. The best way I have found so far is using Heroku PG Backups add-on and it's free. I followed following steps to migrate
production database to staging server:
1) Create the backup for the production-app db
heroku pg:backups capture --app production-app
This will generate b001 backup file from the main database (usually production db in database.yml)
2) To view all the backups (OPTIONAL)
heroku pg:backups --app production-app
3) Now use the pg:backups restore command to populate staging server database from the last backup file on production server
heroku pg:backups restore $(heroku pg:backups public-url --app production-app) DATABASE_URL --app staging-app
Remember that restore is a destructive operation, it will delete existing data before replacing it with the contents of the backup file.

Answer 2

So things are even easier now .. checkout the transfer command as part of pgbackups
heroku pgbackups:transfer HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_PINK sushi-staging::HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_OLIVE -a sushi
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/upgrading-heroku-postgres-databases#4b-alternative-transfer-data-between-applications
This has worked beautifully for me taking production code back to my staging site.

Answer 3

The correct answer has changed again as of March 11, 2015.
heroku pg:backups restore $(heroku pg:backups public-url --app myapp-production) DATABASE_URL --app myapp-staging
Note specifically that the argument is now public-url.
https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2015/3/11/pgbackups-levels-up

Answer 4

Update for mid-2015...
The pgbackups add-on has been deprecated. No more pgbackups:transfer. pg:copy is ideal for this scenario.
To copy a database from yourapp (example db name: HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_PINK_URL to yourapp_staging (example db name: HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_WHITE_URL)
# turn off the web dynos in staging
heroku maintenance:on -a yourapp-staging
# if you have non-web-dynos, do them too
heroku ps:scale worker=0 -a yourapp-staging
# backup the staging database if you are paranoid like me (optional)
heroku pg:backups capture -a yourapp-staging
# execute the copy to splat over the top of the staging database
heroku pg:copy yourapp::HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_PINK_URL HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_WHITE_URL -a yourapp-staging
Then when it's complete, turn staging back on:
# this is if you have workers, change '1' to whatever
heroku ps:scale worker=1 -a yourapp-staging
heroku maintenance:off -a yourapp-staging
Reminder: you can use heroku pg:info -a yourapp-staging (and yourapp) to get the database constants.
(source: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/upgrading-heroku-postgres-databases#upgrade-with-pg-copy-default)

Answer 5

psql -h test_host -c 'drop database test_db_name; create database test_db_name;'
pg_dump -h production_host production_db_name | psql -h test_host test_db_name`
This can be done on production_host or on test_host — will work both ways.

Answer 6

Have not tested this, but it might work.
Do this to get the URL of your source database:
heroku console "ENV['DATABASE_URL']" --app mysourceapp
Then try executing db:push with that.
heroku db:push database_url_from_before --app mytargetapp
This might not work if Heroku doesn't allow access to the DB machines from outside their network, which is probably the case. You could, perhaps, try using taps (gem that heroku db commands use internally) from within your app code somewhere (maybe a rake task). This would be even faster than the above approach because everything stays completely within AWS.
Edit:
Here's an (admittedly hacky) way to do what I described above:
Grab the database URL as in the first code snippet above. Then from a rake task (you could do it on console but you risk running into the 30 second timeout limit on console commands), execute a shell command to taps (couldn't easily determine whether it's possible to use taps directly from Ruby; all docs show use of the CLI):
`taps pull database_url_from_source_app #{ENV['DATABASE_URL']}`
The backticks are important; this is how Ruby denotes a shell command, which taps is. Hopefully the taps command is accessible from the app. This avoids the problem of accessing the database machine from outside Heroku, since you're running this command from within your app.

Answer 7

Heroku enables you to fork existing applications in production. Use heroku fork to copy an existing application, including add-ons, config vars, and Heroku Postgres data.
Follow the instructions on Heroku: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/fork-app

Answer 8

Update for mid-2016...
Heroku now have a --fast flag when creating forks, however they will be up to 30 hours out-of-date.
$ heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:standard-4 --fork HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_CHARCOAL --fast --app sushi
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-fork#fork-fast-option