How to Back Up MySQL Databases From The Command Line

To backup a MySQL database you can use a graphical interface such as phpmysql, however this can be done quite simply from the command line.
From the command line:
First you must login to MySQL

mysql -u root -p — (the root part assumes root is your mysql username)

A database backup is essentially a file that contains all the tables, fields and data from your database, stored in a text file.
To perform a backup, use the following command line:

mysqldump database_name > database_name.sql
database name is the SQL database name (the output can be different)
e.g. mysqldump gallery > gallery.sql

This command only backs up a single database, if you wish to do multiple databases then use:

mysqldump --databases database_one database_two > two_databases.sql

This allows the backup of many databases, in to one backup file.
You can backup all databases with this command:

mysqldump --all-databases > all_databases.sql