How to import CSV file to MySQL table

Question

I have an unnormalized events-diary CSV from a client that I'm trying to load into a MySQL table so that I can refactor into a sane format. I created a table called 'CSVImport' that has one field for every column of the CSV file. The CSV contains 99 columns , so this was a hard enough task in itself:

CREATE TABLE 'CSVImport' (id INT);
ALTER TABLE CSVImport ADD COLUMN Title VARCHAR(256);
ALTER TABLE CSVImport ADD COLUMN Company VARCHAR(256);
ALTER TABLE CSVImport ADD COLUMN NumTickets VARCHAR(256);
...
ALTER TABLE CSVImport Date49 ADD COLUMN Date49 VARCHAR(256);
ALTER TABLE CSVImport Date50 ADD COLUMN Date50 VARCHAR(256);

No constraints are on the table, and all the fields hold VARCHAR(256) values, except the columns which contain counts (represented by INT), yes/no (represented by BIT), prices (represented by DECIMAL), and text blurbs (represented by TEXT).

I tried to load data into the file:

LOAD DATA INFILE '/home/paul/clientdata.csv' INTO TABLE CSVImport;
Query OK, 2023 rows affected, 65535 warnings (0.08 sec)
Records: 2023  Deleted: 0  Skipped: 0  Warnings: 198256
SELECT * FROM CSVImport;
| NULL             | NULL        | NULL           | NULL | NULL               | 
...

The whole table is filled with NULL.

I think the problem is that the text blurbs contain more than one line, and MySQL is parsing the file as if each new line would correspond to one databazse row. I can load the file into OpenOffice without a problem.

The clientdata.csv file contains 2593 lines, and 570 records. The first line contains column names. I think it is comma delimited, and text is apparently delimited with doublequote.

UPDATE:

When in doubt, read the manual: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/load-data.html

I added some information to the LOAD DATA statement that OpenOffice was smart enough to infer, and now it loads the correct number of records:

LOAD DATA INFILE "/home/paul/clientdata.csv"
INTO TABLE CSVImport
COLUMNS TERMINATED BY ','
OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
ESCAPED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
IGNORE 1 LINES;

But still there are lots of completely NULL records, and none of the data that got loaded seems to be in the right place.

Answer 1

I see something strange. You are using for ESCAPING the same character you use for ENCLOSING. So the engine does not know what to do when it founds a '"' and I think that is why nothing seems to be in the right place. I think that if you remove the line of ESCAPING, should run great. Like:

LOAD DATA INFILE "/home/paul/clientdata.csv"
INTO TABLE CSVImport
COLUMNS TERMINATED BY ','
OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
IGNORE 1 LINES;

Unless you analyze (manually, visually, ... ) your CSV and find which character uses for escape. Sometimes is '\'. But if you do not have it, do not use it.

Answer 2

If you are using a windows machine with Excel spreadsheet loaded, the new mySql plugin to Excel is phenomenal. The folks at Oracle really did a nice job on that software. You can make the database connection directly from Excel. That plugin will analyse your data, and set up the tables for you in a format consistent with the data. I had some monster big csv files of data to convert. This tool was a big time saver.

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/windows/excel/

You can make updates from within Excel that will populate to the database online. This worked exceedingly well with mySql files created on ultra inexpensive GoDaddy shared hosting. (Note when you create the table at GoDaddy, you have to select some off-standard settings to enable off site access of the database...)

With this plugin you have pure interactivity between your XL spreadsheet and online mySql data storage.

Answer 3

Here is sample excel file screen shot:

Save as and choose .csv.

And you will have as shown below .csv data screen shot if you open using notepad++ or any other notepad.

Make sure you remove header and have column alignment in .csv as in mysql Table. Replace folder_name by your folder name

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE
'D:/folder_name/myfilename.csv' INTO TABLE mail FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' (fname,lname ,email, phone);

If big data, you can take coffee and have it load!.

Thats all you need.

Answer 4

PHP Query for import csv file to mysql database

$query = <<<EOF
            LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '$file'
             INTO TABLE users
             FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
             LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
             IGNORE 1 LINES
            (name,mobile,email)
    EOF;
if (!$result = mysqli_query($this->db, $query))
   {
        exit(mysqli_error($this->db));
   }

**Sample CSV file data **

name,mobile,email
Christopher Gritton,570-686-3439,[e-mail]
Brandon Wilson,541-309-5149,[e-mail]
Craig White,516-795-8065,[e-mail]
David Whitney,713-214-3966,[e-mail]

Answer 5

You can fix this by listing the columns in you LOAD DATA statement. From the manual:

LOAD DATA INFILE 'persondata.txt' INTO TABLE persondata (col1,col2,...);

...so in your case you need to list the 99 columns in the order in which they appear in the csv file.

Answer 6

Use mysqlimport to load a table into the database:

mysqlimport --ignore-lines=1 \
            --fields-terminated-by=, \
            --local -u root \
            -p Database \
             TableName.csv

I found it at http://chriseiffel.com/everything-linux/how-to-import-a-large-csv-file-to-mysql/

To make the delimiter a tab, use --fields-terminated-by='\t'