Easy way to view postgresql dump files?
database, pg-dump, postgresql-9.1
Solution
Try opening the files with text editor - the default dump format is plain text.
If the dump is not plain text - try using `pg_restore -l your_db_dump.file` command. It will list all objects in the database dump (like tables, indexes ...).
Another possible way (may not work, haven't tried it) is to `grep` through the output of `pg_restore your_db_dump.file` command. If I understood correctly the manual - the output of `pg_restore` is just a sequence of SQL queries, that will rebuild the db.
Problem
I have a ton of postgresql dump files I need to peruse through for data. Do I have to install Postgresql and "recover" each one of them into new databases one by one? Or I'm hoping there's a postgresql client that can simply open them up and I can peek at the data, maybe even run a simple SQL query? The dump files are all from a Postgresql v9.1.9 server. Or maybe there's a tool that can easily make a database "connection" to the dump files? UPDATE: These are not text files. They are binary. They come from Heroku's backup mechanism, this is what Heroku says about how they create their backups: PG Backups uses the native pg_dump PostgreSQL tool to create its backup files, making it trivial to export to other PostgreSQL installations.