MySQL saving database to a file and reinserting

To save the contents of a database, use

$ mysqldump --databases -u root -p name > name.sql

where name is the name of the database to save the data into, and name.sql is a file which contains the information in the database.

To reinsert the data from the above step back into the database, use

$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> source name.sql;

This overwrites any changes in the database which happened after it was saved to name.sql.