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Using snapshot-reference in diff-changelog commands

Last updated: July 14, 2025

You can use the JSON format snapshot file in the diff and diff-changelog commands.

Before you begin

Make sure you've installed Liquibase and can run liquibase from your command line.
Create a Liquibase project.
Connect your database to Liquibase. You'll need to follow the integration guide for your specific database.
If you have an existing database, you'll also need to generate your changelog from your existing database.
Set up your changelog structure and be sure your changelogs are connected.

Procedure

Make sure your local environment is up-to-date by getting the latest changelog from source control.

Configure the Liquibase properties file to point to a local development database and run the update command to ensure your source database matches the changelog file.

Take a snapshot of the local development database by running the snapshot-reference command.

liquibase --output-file=myschemaSnapshot.json snapshot-reference --snapshot-format=json

Manually change the local development database if needed.

Append changes to the changelog by running the diff-changelog command.

liquibase diff-changelog --reference-url=jdbc:oracle:thin://localhost:9090/mem:test --url="offline:oracle?snapshot=mySnapshot.json"

Note: If you want to see changes without appending them to the changelog file, add--changelog-file=mydiffchangelog.xmlto thediff-changelogcommand:

liquibase diff-changelog --reference-url=jdbc:oracle:thin://localhost:9090/mem:test --url="offline:oracle?snapshot=mySnapshot.json" --changelog-file=mydiffchangelog.xml

Note: The format for the URL is the following:"offline:<dbms shortname>?snapshot=<path/to/snapshot.json>"(with quotes). Use the name of your database type from the list of the Liquibase Database Tutorials in place of <dbms shortname> and the path relative to where the command is running in place of<path/to/snapshot.json>.

Review the changelog file to ensure that it matches your expectations of the manual changes that were made.

Mark the manual changes as deployed in the local development database.

liquibase changelog-sync