Export your PostgreSQL database anonymized. Replace all sensitive data thanks to faker. Output to a file that you can easily import with psql.

Run this command by giving a connexion string and an output file name (no need to install first thanks to npx):

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://user:secret@localhost:1234/mydb -o dump.sql

☝️ This command requires pg_dump. It may already be installed as soon as PostgreSQL is installed.

Output can also be stdout ('-') so you can pipe the output to zip, gz, or to psql:

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://user:secret@localhost:1234/mydb -o - | psql DATABASE_URL

Use --columns option with a comma separated list of column name:

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://localhost/mydb \
  --columns=email,firstName,lastName,phone

Specifying another list via --columns replace the default automatically anonymized values:

email,name,description,address,city,country,phone,comment,birthdate

You can also specify the table for a column using the dot notation:

public.user.email,public.product.description,email,name

You can also choose which faker function you want to use to replace data (default is faker.random.word):

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://localhost/mydb \
  --columns=firstName:faker.name.firstName,lastName:faker.name.lastName

👉 You don't need to specify faker function since the command will try to find correct function via column name.

You can use plain text too for static replacements:

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://localhost/mydb \
  --columns=textcol:hello,jsoncol:{},intcol:12

Create an extension file, written in javascript

// myExtension.js
module.exports = {
  maskEmail: (email) => {
   const [name, domain] = email.split('@');
   const { length: len } = name;
   const maskedName = name[0] + '...' + name[len - 1];
   const maskedEmail = maskedName + '@' + domain;
   return maskedEmail;
  }
};

Pass the path to --extension and use the module exports in --columns

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://localhost/mydb \
  --extension ./myExtension.js \
  --columns=email:extension.maskEmail

You can use the --config option to specify a file with a list of column names and optional replacements, one per line:

Create a configuration file:

name
email
password:faker.random.word

Pass the path to the file into --config

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://localhost/mydb \
  --config /path/to/file

Use --skip to skip anonymizing entire tables

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://localhost/mydb --skip public.posts

Use --preserve-null to skip anonymization on fields with NULL values.

npx pg-anonymizer postgres://localhost/mydb --preserve-null

Use --faker-locale to change the locale used by faker (default: en)

The anonymized output file is plain SQL text, you can import it with psql.

psql -d mylocaldb < output.sql

There are a bunch of competitors, still I failed to use them:

• postgresql_anonymizer may be hard to setup and may be cumbersome for simple usage. Still, I guess it's the best solution.
• pganonymize fails when it does not use public schema or columns have uppercase characters
• pganonymizer also fails with simple cases. Errors are not explicit and silent.