# How is dumpdata used properly? (djangocms)

**URL:** <https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/how-is-dumpdata-used-properly-djangocms/5857>\
**Category:** Using Django\
**Created:** [December 25, 2020, 10:50pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/how-is-dumpdata-used-properly-djangocms/5857 "2020-12-25T22:50:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Spidiffpaffpuff](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/spidiffpaffpuff/32/1557_2.png) [@Spidiffpaffpuff](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/Spidiffpaffpuff)\
**Post date:** [December 25, 2020, 10:50pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/how-is-dumpdata-used-properly-djangocms/5857/1 "2020-12-25T22:50:10Z")

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I have a local project and I want to deploy it. The server is ready and the code files are uploaded. Locally I use mysqlite, for deployment I have a mysql database.  
When I use dumpdata \> db.json and upload the file, it complains about the file not being UTF8. When I locally convert the file into UTF8, it loses half its size and when I upload that, it will not be loaded either.  
When I check out the file, I can see that it breaks off right in the middle of it. As far I can tell, the model type that is not UTF8 compatible is a django cms page. The file breaks off where the body-property opens. So I figure that there is something there that cannot be implicitly converted into UTF8.  
So how do I use dumpdata properly? I want all the data from the local database to be transfered to the new database which is entirely empty. Is there a way to force dumpdata to create a UTF8 file? Is there a different way without using Django to convert the data from the sqlite db into the mysql db?

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**Author:** ![KenWhitesell](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/kenwhitesell/32/280_2.png) [@KenWhitesell](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/KenWhitesell)\
**Post date:** [December 25, 2020, 11:07pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/how-is-dumpdata-used-properly-djangocms/5857/2 "2020-12-25T23:07:07Z")

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I don’t have an immediate suggestion regarding the dumpdata / loaddata issue, but you could also dump your database as SQL statements. That _might_ make it easier to identify / fix specific data causing issues.  
`sqlite3 db.sqlite3 .dump`

Assuming the data is clean, you could then run those sql statements to load your new database.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Spidiffpaffpuff](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/spidiffpaffpuff/32/1557_2.png) [@Spidiffpaffpuff](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/Spidiffpaffpuff)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2020, 9:10pm UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/how-is-dumpdata-used-properly-djangocms/5857/3 "2020-12-26T21:10:48Z")

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It wasn’t clean. 🙂  
So, I tried the SQL dump and when I tried to reimport, it told me that there something wrong at line 1. I opened the dump file, it looked normal… So instead of trying to fix that, I did something else. I uploaded my mysqlite-db onto the server. I told the installation to use this db. I did “dumpdata” on the server, aka in a linux environment, where the file does not get changed to UTF16. I then reconfigured the installation to use the MySQL-db and did “loaddata”.  
After learning that you should omit auth.permissions and contenttypes to avoid an IntegrityError, I managed to transfer my data from one db to another. Yay. 💩