PostgreSQL 9.3: Dump a database excluding the data of some tables

Question

Consider a production database with a few dozens of normal-size tables, and a handful of huge tables.

I am looking for a convenient way to pg_dump the database content, excluding the few huge tables, for my own local laptop. I can easily dump a small sample of the huge tables using \COPY, if I occasionally need to address these tables.

If I use the --exclude-table=table argument, both the schema and the data of the huge table is omitted, which breaks queries expecting these table on the local development environment.

Is there a way to dump a data base with a complete schema, excluding the content of some given tables?

Answer 1

I think you need to use --exclude-table-data=table option. From the docs:

--exclude-table-data=table

Do not dump data for any tables matching the table pattern. The pattern is interpreted according to the same rules as for -t. --exclude-table-data can be given more than once to exclude tables matching any of several patterns. This option is useful when you need the definition of a particular table even though you do not need the data in it.

To exclude data for all tables in the database, see --schema-only.