wp-cli db query beats phpMyAdmin for one-off work

Reaching for a GUI to answer one question about a database means finding credentials, a tunnel and a browser, when the site’s own configuration already has all of it.

$ wp db query "SELECT option_name, LENGTH(option_value) AS len
    FROM wp_options WHERE autoload='yes'
    ORDER BY len DESC LIMIT 10"

$ wp db size --tables --human-readable
$ wp db export backup-$(date +%F).sql --add-drop-table

The autoloaded options query is the first thing worth running on any slow site — every one of those rows is read on every request, and a plugin storing a megabyte there is not rare. wp db export uses the site’s own credentials and charset, which avoids the class of corruption that comes from a mysqldump run with the wrong default character set. All of it works over --ssh, which removes the tunnel as well.