If you've been a Magento developer for any length of time, you've likely encountered a tricky situation: a client has made hundreds or even thousands of changes in their staging environment. Now, the big question arises—should you transfer all those changes to production, or is it easier to sync production data back to staging and promote it?
While every case is unique, my experience has shown that migrating customers and orders are often far more straightforward than identifying and transferring every change. Apart from the core_config_data table, customers, and orders are typically the key data that must be migrated to ensure a smooth transition.
I’ve put together a script that efficiently migrates customers and orders from a Magento production environment down to staging to simplify this process. It runs directly from the Linux command line and requires access to production and staging databases from the same terminal session.
You can find the script in my GitHub repository, available here: Magento Migrate Customers and Orders
Backup First—Always!
Before running any database migrations, always create backups of both environments. Even with meticulous planning, unexpected issues can arise—incorrect credentials, unforeseen script errors, or database corruption. Recovering lost data can be a nightmare or utterly impossible without a backup.
So, take a few minutes to back everything up before proceeding. Better safe than sorry!
Let me know if you try out the script or have any suggestions for improvement.
