How to insert csv data into postgreSQL
To specify the file in Postgres for the COPY
command to copy the comma-separated data into the users
table of the Postgres SQL, you need to use the FROM
clause followed by the file path or the STDIN
keyword.
If you want to copy data from a file, you can specify the file path in the FROM
clause, like this:
First standard way
COPY users FROM '/path/to/data.csv' WITH (FORMAT csv, DELIMITER ',', HEADER true);
In this example, we're copying data from the /path/to/data.csv
file, which is a CSV file with a comma delimiter and a header row.
the "HEADER true" option specifies that the first row of the CSV file contains the column headers. If your CSV file does not contain headers, you should remove this option.
Second STDIN way
If you want to copy data from the standard input (stdin), you can use the STDIN
keyword, like this:
COPY users FROM STDIN WITH (FORMAT csv, DELIMITER ',', HEADER true);
In this example, we're copying data from the standard input (stdin) with the same format and delimiter options as before. You can then pipe data into the STDIN
of the COPY
command to insert data into the users
table.
To pipe the data from CSV using psql (Method 1)
To pipe data into the STDIN of the COPY
command, you can use the command-line shell or another program that can send data to the standard input stream of a process. Here is an example using the command-line shell:
cat data.csv | psql -d dbname -c "COPY users FROM STDIN WITH DELIMITER as ','"
In this example, data.csv
is a comma-separated values file containing the data you want to insert into the users
table. The cat
command outputs the contents of the file to the standard output stream, which is then piped to the psql
command. The -d
option specifies the name of the database to connect to, and the -c
option specifies the SQL command to execute. The COPY
command reads data from the standard input stream, and the WITH DELIMITER as ','
option specifies the delimiter to use for parsing the data.
Note that you will need to have the necessary permissions to execute the COPY
command and access the users
table in the database.
To pipe data from CSV (Method 2)
Assume that you have a CSV file named users.csv
with the following data:
Alice,Smith,US,asmith,password123,asmith@example.com
Bob,Jones,UK,bjones,bob123,bjones@example.com
Here's how you can use the COPY
command to insert this data into a users
table in PostgreSQL:
- First, create a
users
table in PostgreSQL with the appropriate columns:
CREATE TABLE users (
firstname TEXT,
lastname TEXT,
country TEXT,
username TEXT,
password TEXT,
email TEXT
);
- Next, run the following command in the terminal to start the
psql
command-line interface and connect to your PostgreSQL database:
psql -U <username> -d <database_name>
Replace <username>
and <database_name>
with your PostgreSQL username and database name, respectively.
- Once you are connected to your PostgreSQL database, run the following command to start the
COPY
command:
COPY users FROM stdin WITH DELIMITER as ','
- After running the above command, you can start entering the data from your CSV file. Copy and paste the contents of the
users.csv
file into the terminal, making sure to separate each value with a comma (,
) and to end each row with a newline (\n
). TheCOPY
command will continue to wait for more data until you signal the end of input by typing\.\n
.
Here's an example of what you would copy and paste into the terminal:
Alice,Smith,US,asmith,password123,asmith@example.com
Bob,Jones,UK,bjones,bob123,bjones@example.com
\.
- After pasting in the data and ending with
\.\n
, press Enter to execute theCOPY
command.
If everything goes well, the data from the users.csv
file will be inserted into the users
table in your PostgreSQL database. You can verify this by running a SELECT
query on the users
table:
SELECT * FROM users;
This should return the following output:
firstname | lastname | country | username | password | email
-----------+----------+---------+----------+---------------+--------------------------
Alice | Smith | US | asmith | password123 | asmith@example.com
Bob | Jones | UK | bjones | bob123 | bjones@example.com
(2 rows)