Take a snapshot of your RethinkDB using shell script and upload to S3

rethink_dump.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Remember to install the Python client drivers for RethinkDB to use dump
# http://www.rethinkdb.com/docs/install-drivers/python/

DB="" # name of the database to back up
APP="" # file name prefix for dump archive

TIMESTAMP=`date +%F-%H%M`
RETHINKDUMP_PATH="/usr/bin/rethinkdb"
BACKUPS_DIR="/home/me/backups/$APP"
BACKUP_NAME="$APP-$TIMESTAMP"

S3_KEY=""
S3_SECRET=""
S3_BUCKET=""
AWS_PATH="/backups"

export LC_ALL=C
mkdir -p $BACKUPS_DIR
$RETHINKDUMP_PATH dump -e $DB -f $BACKUPS_DIR/$BACKUP_NAME.tar.gz

function uploadS3 {
  date=$(date +"%a, %d %b %Y %T %z")
  acl="x-amz-acl:public-read"
  content_type='application/x-compressed-tar'
  string="PUT\n\n$content_type\n$date\n$acl\n/$S3_BUCKET$AWS_PATH/$BACKUP_NAME.tar.gz"
  signature=$(echo -en "${string}" | openssl sha1 -hmac "${S3_SECRET}" -binary | base64)
  curl -X PUT -T "$BACKUPS_DIR/$BACKUP_NAME.tar.gz" \
    -H "Host: $S3_BUCKET.s3.amazonaws.com" \
    -H "Date: $date" \
    -H "Content-Type: $content_type" \
    -H "$acl" \
    -H "Authorization: AWS ${S3_KEY}:$signature" \
    "https://$S3_BUCKET.s3.amazonaws.com$AWS_PATH/$BACKUP_NAME.tar.gz"
}

uploadS3