Django: What are the best practices to migrate a project from sqlite to PostgreSQL

In my experience, dumping & restoring from SQL doesn’t work properly.

You should follow this sequence instead:

1. Dump db contents to json

$ ./manage.py dumpdata > dump.json

2. Switch the backend in settings.py

DATABASES = {
    # COMMENT OUT:
    # 'default': dj_database_url.config(default="sqlite:////full/path/to/your/database/file.sqlite"),
    # ADD THIS INSTEAD:
    'default': dj_database_url.config(default="postgres://localhost:5432/postgres_db_name"),
}

3. Syncdb and migrate the new DB to the same table structure

$ ./manage.py syncdb
$ ./manage.py migrate

4. Load the json to the new db.

$ ./manage.py loaddata dump.json

5. Congrats! Now the new data is in your postgres db.

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