How to insert bulk csv file into SQL Server - sql

Question

I have a csv file that have columns like this
"Hold","EmpID","Source","Shard-Exists","Type"
but my DB table look like this
//Note: My Id is auto increment
"Id","Hold","EmpID","Source","Type","CurrentDate"
I'm just wondering how can bulk insert my csv file into the database table without the shard-Exist column and also passing the Current Date automatically.
Any help or suggestion will be really appreciated
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.Actors;
GO
-- import the file
BULK INSERT dbo.Actors
FROM 'C:\Documents\Skyvia\csv-to-mssql\actor.csv'
WITH
(
FORMAT='CSV',
FIRSTROW=2
)
GO

Answer 1

You should be able to use a format file to accomplish the 'skip columns in table' task. I'll modify the example from the MS docs.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<BCPFORMAT xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2004/bulkload/format" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<RECORD>
<FIELD ID="1" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="," MAX_LENGTH="7"/>
<FIELD ID="2" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="," MAX_LENGTH="25" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"/>
<FIELD ID="3" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="," MAX_LENGTH="25" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"/>
<FIELD ID="4" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="," MAX_LENGTH="25" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"/>
<FIELD ID="5" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="," MAX_LENGTH="25" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"/>
<FIELD ID="6" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="\r\n" MAX_LENGTH="30" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"/>
</RECORD>
<ROW>
<COLUMN SOURCE="2" NAME="Hold" xsi:type="SQLINT"/>
<COLUMN SOURCE="3" NAME="EmpID" xsi:type="SQLINT"/>
<COLUMN SOURCE="4" NAME="Source" xsi:type="SQLVARYCHAR"/>
<COLUMN SOURCE="6" NAME="Type" xsi:type="SQLVARYCHAR"/>
</ROW>
</BCPFORMAT>
Note, in the <ROW> portion that I'm not specifying anything for the ID or CurrentDate columns. It's also noteworthy that there's no SOURCE="5"; that's how the Shard-Exists field in the source data is being skipped.
As to auto-generating a value for CurrentDate, my recommendation would be to add a default constraint to your table. that can be done like so:
ALTER TABLE dbo.Actors
ADD CONSTRAINT DF_Actors__CurrentDate
DEFAULT (getdate()) FOR CurrentDate;