A simple coding blog for new graduates

These are the steps I compiled to clone a Mongo database from Heroku to local. It is provided as-is without warranty nor guarantee nor support.

1. Open command prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Mac/Linux) and navigate to the project’s working folder.
2. Get the config vars from Heroku with heroku config --app <appname>
   • Find the MONGOLAB_URI value. It will be in the form of: mongodb://<username>:<password>@<url>:<port>/<database>
3. Run the following command to make a copy of the production database to your local working directory.
   • Use the values from the config file: mongodump -h <url>:<port> -d <database> -u <username> -p <password>
   • mongodump will create the following directory to store the data: dump/<database>/
4. Make sure your local instance of mongod is running.
5. Drop your existing local database with the following command.
   • mongo <dbname> --eval "db.dropDatabase()"
   • <dbname> is your local database name specified in your project’s config file under MONGOLAB_URI.
6. Use mongorestore to put the prod data into your local mongodb.
   • mongorestore -d <dbname> dump/<database>/
7. Ensure data was restored
   • Start mongo command line interface: mongo
   • Show databases and ensure <dbname> is in the list: > show databases
   • Switch to <dbname>: > use <dbname>
   • Ensure games and players tables exist: > show collections
   • If satisfied, then exit mongo command line: > exit
8. Run the app and see the prod data (see “Running” section below)
9. ???
10. Profit!