# Mysqldump alternative - MySQL Shell

I'm writing this post thinking I might not be alone, having installed MySQL Shell alongside MySQL Server without looking too much into it.

I stumbled upon its many uses while struggling to import `utf8mb4` content from one MySQL instance to another, using mysqldump. Even though I tried many hacks, like hex-blob, exporting as latin1 while skipping charset checks, nothing seemed to work for some special characters that my `utf8mb4` database contained.


## Exporting / Dumping a database

I will be using `util.dumpTables` in this example as it can be used to import within an arbitrary schema, regardless of its name (`util.dumpSchemas` doesn't seem to allow schemas to be renamed during the importation process).

```console
mysqlsh root@localhost
MySQL JS > util.dumpTables("myDatabase",[], "/data/dump/myDatabase.dump", {all:true,threads: 24})
```
**Note:** If you are on Windows, you will want to escape backslashes `\\` in your path.

The `util.dumpTables` accepts 3 or 4 arguments, being:
* The Database/schema name (required)
* A list/array of tables (required)
* A destination path for the dump files
* Options
  * `all` allows to provide an empty array as the table list, but to dump all the tables from the specified schema.
* `threads` allows the operation to run on multiple threads in parallel (one per virtual CPU core?), making everything much faster.

----

## Importing tables into an existing Schema

**Important:** Make sure the tables you are about to import do not exist before importing. If necessary, drop them (I recommend taking a snapshot beforehand).

Before we begin the import, you might need to allow local files to be read by your MySQL Server.

```console
mysqlsh root@localhost
MySQL JS > \sql SET global local_infile=true;
MySQL JS > util.loadDump("/data/dump/myDatabase.dump", {schema:"myDatabase2", threads:24, ignoreversion:true})
MySQL JS > \sql SET global local_infile=false;
```

Here, the schema is specified as an option, since I want to import the data in a schema that has a different name than the dump's original.
Also, I used `ignoreversion` to allow me to import data from MySQL 5.7.X to a MySQL 8.X instance.

Voila, the transfer was quick, flawless, and the encoding was preserved throughout the process!