Accessing your database from the command line¶

You can access the databases of your Cloud Platform application by running the drush ah-sql-cli command, or by using the Cloud Platform API. The ah-sql-cli command is the same as running the drush sql-cli command, except ah-sql-cli doesn’t require a functioning Drupal website.

If you prefer to use a GUI, you can use phpMyAdmin, a GUI-based MySQL database management tool. For more information, see Tools for administering your database.

Accessing your database with ah-sql-cli¶

To access a database in your application using the ah-sql-cli command:

Connect to an environment of your application using SSH.

For more information, see Managing applications using the command line.
Open a connection to your database with a command similar to the following:
```
drush @[site].[env] ah-sql-cli
```
You can also use the shorter alias, ah-sqlc.

Replace [site] with your application name and [env] with the name of the environment whose database you want to connect to (typically, dev, test, or prod, for the development, staging, and production environments, respectively). You can use the --db option to connect to a database other than your primary Drupal database. Note that unlike drush sql-cli, the ah-sql-cli command doesn’t support the --uri option.

For example:
- If your sitename is myexample and you want to connect to the primary database for your production environment, use the following command:
```
drush @myexample.prod ah-sql-cli
```
- If your sitename is myexample and you want to connect to a secondary database named postal for your staging environment, use a command similar to the following:
```
drush @myexample.test ah-sql-cli --db=postal
```

You can now run SQL commands from the mysql> prompt. Enter quit to exit when you finish.

Similar commands to ah-sql-cli¶

Cloud Platform also includes the ah-sql-connect command, which is a Drush command you can also use connect to your database. The ah-sql-connect command is like drush sql-connect, except that ah-sql-connect doesn’t require a functioning Drupal website. The ah-sql-connect command takes the same options as ah-sql-cli. The output of ah-sql-connect is the MySQL command (with user name, password, and database name) which you can use to connect to your database. For example:

drush @[site].[env] ah-sql-connect mysql -h free-1712 -u example1dev -myverysecurepassword example1dev

Command options¶

To review the arguments and options for the ah-sql-cli and ah-sql-connect Drush commands, see Custom Drush commands for Cloud Platform.

Accessing your database with the Cloud Platform API¶

With the Cloud Platform API, you can create, restore, and delete backups of your application’s databases. For an example implementation, download this example database creation script.