Importing a database from the command line

Error: Failed to get current SQL modes. Reason: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (13)

In the example above, I couldn’t get wp db import (WP CLI) to import a database since a different mysql.sock was used.

The solution

We can use the mysql command to import the database directly:

mysql -h localhost -u __user__ -S __path_to_mysql.sock__ __databasename__ < __path_to_sql_file__

Replace the __variables__ above with the correct information like below:

mysql -h localhost -u theuser -S /tmp/custom-mysql.sock thedatabase < ~/tmp/database-to-import.sql