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Importing Databases Into Local Dev Environments (XAMPP, MAMP, Local)

Get a big production database running on your laptop without fighting bundled PHP limits.

Best‑practice workflow

  • • Each stack ships its own PHP and php.ini — edit the right one
  • • The bundled mysql CLI beats phpMyAdmin for large dumps
  • • Match charset to utf8mb4 to avoid garbled characters
  • • Split the dump when you can't or won't touch config files

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