A quick time for any users for phpMyAdmin and MySQL.

When you backup your database using phpMyAdmin, an "export" in their terminology, by default it names the file simply databasename.txt, e.g. damien_blog.txt. If you do regular backups this becomes a slight hassle as each time you have to rename the file to something more useful, and decide if you want to name it after the date, or add a version number (e.g. "database_backup_5.txt"), etc.

There's an easier way to take care of this. Instead of letting phpMyAdmin name the backup file after the database, have it automatically add the date to the filename too. Then, when you download the file you'll be able to list them in order, oldest through newest, and never wonder whether you named the file correctly the last time, or which one is newer.

To do so is quite easy, simply go to the Export page in phpMyAdmin, change the Save as file filename template to __DB___%Y%m%d%H%i and your backup will now be named e.g. damien_blog_200602131315.txt. What makes this even more useful is if you click the option labelled remember template, that way you'll never have to remember this again, simply click it and all backups that you do from then on (from that computer and that web browser) will be named accordingly.

Note that the date is listed as year, month, day, hour and then minute, which when you have several files listed in a directory one after the other makes it really easy to see the files in the correct order, rather than trying do list them with e.g. the European date format of day-month-year or the American format of month-day-year.

Update: Thanks to reader Jörg for pointing out that the last part of the string should have been %i rather than %m to output the minutes.