How to Backup & Restore Apache Answer (Self-Hosted) with MariaDB

Hi there! I’m Maneshwar. Right now, I’m building LiveAPI, a first-of-its-kind tool that helps you automatically index API endpoints across all your repositories. LiveAPI makes it easier to discover, understand, and interact with APIs in large infrastructures.

Whether you’re migrating your Apache Answer instance to a new server or just playing it safe with backups, this guide walks you through backing up, purging, and restoring data — without breaking the Answer UI or your sanity.

Prerequisites

• Docker installed and running.
• MariaDB or MySQL set up (port 3306 open).
• Access to your Answer container or Docker build.
• SSH access to both source and target servers if migrating.

Step-by-Step Guide

Build & Run the Answer Image

Clone and build the Docker image:

git clone https://github.com/apache/answer
cd answer
docker build -t answer:latest .

Run it:

docker run -d -p 9080:80 -v answer-data:/data --name answer answer:latest

This mounts /data inside the container for uploads, cache, etc.

Create a MariaDB User and Empty Database

Connect to your MariaDB instance:

DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS `dev-answer`;
CREATE DATABASE `dev-answer`;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `dev-answer`.* TO 'dev-answer'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'pass123';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Backup Your Answer Data

You can dump the whole DB like this:

mysqldump -u dev-answer -p pass123 -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 dev-answer > backup.sql

Or directly stream into another DB:

mysqldump -u dev-answer -p pass123 -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 dev-answer 
| mysql -u dev-answer -p pass123 -h <TARGET-IP> -P 3306 dev-answer

Restore Without Overwriting the Config Table

The config table holds runtime settings, so you might want to exclude it.

mysqldump --no-create-info --ignore-table=dev-answer.config 
  -u dev-answer -p pass123 -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 dev-answer 
| mysql -u dev-answer -p pass123 -h <TARGET-IP> -P 3306 dev-answer

Purge All Data Except Config (Before Restoring)

If you’re restoring on a dirty DB, clean everything except config:

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

-- Generate TRUNCATE commands:
SELECT CONCAT('TRUNCATE TABLE `', table_name, '`;')
FROM information_schema.tables 
WHERE table_schema = 'dev-answer' AND table_name != 'config';

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;

Repeatable Restore (All Data Including Config)

If you do want to restore everything, even config:

mysqldump --no-create-info 
  -u dev-answer -p pass123 -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 dev-answer 
| mysql -u dev-answer -p pass123 -h <TARGET-IP> -P 3306 dev-answer

Pro Tips

• --no-create-info: prevents table structure from being overwritten.
• --ignore-table=dev-answer.config: keeps your runtime config safe.
• Use -P 3306 only if you’re not using a socket connection.

Final Sanity Check

After restoring:

• Visit the Answer web UI → ensure questions, tags, users load.
• Check /data/uploads/ volume if you were using it (copy it if needed).
• answer config CLI should not reset or log any cache errors.

Summary

With a few mysqldump and Docker incantations, you can fully back up and restore your Apache Answer setup, including optional selective table syncing. Great for:

• Server migration
• Disaster recovery
• Periodic data sync between prod/staging

LiveAPI helps you get all your backend APIs documented in a few minutes.

With LiveAPI, you can generate interactive API docs that allow users to search and execute endpoints directly from the browser.

If you’re tired of updating Swagger manually or syncing Postman collections, give it a shot.