Using pg_dump and pg_restore correctly

Question

So I regularly backup and restore databases and schema's using pgadmin4. I would like to do it with a batch file using commands as pg_dump and pg_restore. I however always fail to succeed in this and could use some help. The way I try to dump one schema (with data) is the following:

pg_dump -U postgres -F c -d database -n schema > mw2

Then I try to restore it with pg_restore:

pg_restore -U postgres -d otherdatabase -n schema mw2

First I tried to use .dump in stead of tar but the result stays the same; which is an empty schema in my database.

Or the following error message:

pg_restore: [archiver] input file does not appear to be a valid archive

Answer 1

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/app-pgrestore.html

--format=format Specify format of the archive. It is not necessary to specify the format, since pg_restore will determine the format automatically. If specified, it can be one of the following:

custom, directory and tar

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/app-pgdump.html

--format=format

Selects the format of the output. format can be one of the following:

p plain Output a plain-text SQL script file (the default).

others are custom, directory and tar

in short - you used defualt plain format, which is meant for using with psql, not pg_restore. So either specify different format with pg_dump or use your file as

psql -f  mw2.tar