I have a csv file and i need to import it to a table in sql 2005 or 2008. The column names and count in the csv are different from the table column names and count. The csv is splitted by a ';' .
Example
CSV FILEcontents:
FirstName;LastName;Country;Age
Roger;Mouthout;Belgium;55
SQL Person Table
Columns: FName,LName,Country
I'd create a temporary table, bulk insert the lot, select into the new table what you need and drop the temporary table.
Something like
CREATE TABLE dbo.TempImport
(
FirstName varchar(255),
LastName varchar(255),
Country varchar(255),
Age varchar(255)
)
GO
BULK INSERT dbo.TempImport FROM 'PathToMyTextFile' WITH (FIELDTERMINATOR = ';', ROWTERMINATOR = '\n')
GO
INSERT INTO dbo.ExistingTable
(
FName,
LName,
Country
)
SELECT FirstName,
LastName,
Country
FROM dbo.TempImport
GO
DROP TABLE dbo.TempImport
GO
You can use a format file when importing with bcp:
Create a format file for your table:
bcp [table_name] format nul -f [format_file_name.fmt] -c -T
9.0
4
1 SQLCHAR 0 100 "," 1 FName SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
2 SQLCHAR 0 100 "," 2 LName SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
3 SQLCHAR 0 100 "," 3 Country SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
4 SQLCHAR 0 100 "\r\n" 0 Age SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Edit the import file. The trick is to add a dummy row for the field you want to skip, and add a '0'
as server column order.
Then import the data using this format file, specifying your inputfile, this format file and the seperator:
bcp [table_name] in [data_file_name] -t , -f [format_file_name.fmt] -T
I now prefer to use XML format files like this with BULK INSERT or OPENROWSET:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<BCPFORMAT xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2004/bulkload/format" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<RECORD>
<FIELD ID="1" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="|" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"/>
<FIELD ID="2" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="|" MAX_LENGTH="37"/>
<FIELD ID="3" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="|" MAX_LENGTH="41"/>
<FIELD ID="4" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="|" MAX_LENGTH="17"/>
<FIELD ID="5" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="\r\n" MAX_LENGTH="10" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"/>
</RECORD>
<ROW>
<COLUMN SOURCE="1" NAME="i" xsi:type="SQLCHAR"/>
<COLUMN SOURCE="2" NAME="j" xsi:type="SQLUNIQUEID"/>
<COLUMN SOURCE="3" NAME="k" xsi:type="SQLNUMERIC" PRECISION="18" SCALE="0"/>
<COLUMN SOURCE="4" NAME="l" xsi:type="SQLBINARY"/>
<COLUMN SOURCE="5" NAME="m" xsi:type="SQLVARYCHAR"/>
</ROW>
</BCPFORMAT>
Then you can use the server-side BULK INSERT command as follows:
BULK INSERT foo FROM '\\mydomain.com\bar\bletch' WITH (FORMATFILE='foo.xml', ERRORFILE='foo.errors', FIRSTROW = 1, BATCHSIZE=10000)
alternatively, if you want to modify the data 'in-flight', you can use the
INSERT foo(i, j,k)
SELECT foo_delimited.i, foo_delimited.j, foo_delimited.k * 2
OPENROWSET(BULK 'foo',
FORMATFILE= 'foo.xml')
AS foo_delimited
For info, with the same structure, you can use this kind of statement:
bcp schema.Table in "/Samples/AdventureWorksDW/DimCurrency.csv" \
-S db.url \
-d databaseName \
-U userName \
-P pwd \
-t ; `# The field separator ` \
-c `# Insert as character and doesn't ask the data type` \
-q `# With quote -- seems to be mandatory`
See example