I am writing a SQL job to replace some old legacy processing. Basically, it reads in a raw text file, does some manipulations to the data, then runs an update statement. Pretty simple. However, I ran into an issue with the BULK INSERT and I don't exactly understand the resolution, so I wanted to post it here.
The BULK INSERT statement I was writing was as follows:
-- Insert statements for procedure here
BULK INSERT [SomeTableName] FROM '\\FILE_PATH_HERE\test.txt'
WITH
(
FIRSTROW = 2,
FIELDTERMINATOR = '\t',
ROWTERMINATOR = '0x0a'--'\r\n'
);
When I ran original statement with the ROWTERMINATOR of '\r\n' no data was populated in my table. When I replaced '\r\n' with 'OxOa' my bulk insert worked.
The reason I am unsure why this worked, is that when I view file in Notepad++ with View->Symbols->Show all characters, I see CRLF at the end of each data line. I thought that '\r\n' was the equivalent of a carriage return line feed (CRLF), but it wasn't working. I thought 'Oxoa' only represented a '\n' so I am a little unsure why changing ROWTERMINATOR from '\r\n' to '0x0a' worked.
Any insight would be appreciated
I'm using Bulk Insert command in T-SQL cause I have a too big csv file. This file has fields that use numeric datatypes like float, but in these fields sometimes there are data with strings like "S/N".
So, how can I force that fields to NULL when I get an string value while I'm inserting?
Now I'm using this command, can you help me?
BULK INSERT [CUBOS_FINDIRECT].[dbo].[ListadoRobinsonTXT]
FROM '\\10.0.20.17\d$\listadoRobinson\listadoRobinsonDef.csv'
WITH
(
FIRSTROW = 2,
MAXERRORS = 0,
FIELDTERMINATOR = ';',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
Thank you in advance so much.
I'm wanting to import a CSV file which has some values as such:
123;456;"78;9";1011
Simply said, there are some quotes in a value, but the value is within double quotes. When I use a bulk import, the value '"78' is put into one column, whereas '9"' is put into the next column. How can I prevent this?
I am using below query:
BULK INSERT CSVTest
FROM 'c:\csvtest.csv'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ';',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
GO
I'm using SQL Server!
In a test environment i've setup the new sql server, and the fieldquote seems to be ignored in the statement, and the fields are still split up. What am I doing wrong? I'm doing:
BULK INSERT CSVTest
FROM 'c:\csvtest.csv'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ';',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n',
FIELDQUOTE='"'
)
GO
I have a CSV file, which contains three dates:
'2010-07-01','2010-08-05','2010-09-04'
When I try to bulk insert them...
BULK INSERT [dbo].[STUDY]
FROM 'StudyTable.csv'
WITH
(
MAXERRORS = 0,
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
I get an error:
Bulk load data conversion error (type mismatch or invalid character for the specified codepage) for row 1, column 1 (CREATED_ON).
So I'm assuming this is because I have an invalid date format. What is the correct format to use?
EDIT
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[STUDY]
(
[CREATED_ON] DATE,
[COMPLETED_ON] DATE,
[AUTHORIZED_ON] DATE,
}
You've got quotes (') around your dates. Remove those and it should work.
Does your data file have a header record? If it does, obviously your table names will not be the correct data type, and will fail when SQL Server tries to INSERT them into your table. Try this:
BULK INSERT [dbo].[STUDY]
FROM 'StudyTable.csv'
WITH
(
MAXERRORS = 0,
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n',
FIRSTROW = 2
)
According to MSDN the BULK INSERT operation technically doesn't support skipping header records in the CSV file. You can either remove the header record or try the above. I don't have SQL Server in front of me at the moment, so I have not confirmed this works. YMMV.
I can't seem to figure out how this is happening.
Here's an example of the file that I'm attempting to bulk insert into SQL server 2005:
***A NICE HEADER HERE***
0000001234|SSNV|00013893-03JUN09
0000005678|ABCD|00013893-03JUN09
0000009112|0000|00013893-03JUN09
0000009112|0000|00013893-03JUN09
Here's my bulk insert statement:
BULK INSERT sometable
FROM 'E:\filefromabove.txt
WITH
(
FIRSTROW = 2,
FIELDTERMINATOR= '|',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
But, for some reason the only output I can get is:
0000005678|ABCD|00013893-03JUN09
0000009112|0000|00013893-03JUN09
0000009112|0000|00013893-03JUN09
The first record always gets skipped, unless I remove the header altogether and don't use the FIRSTROW parameter. How is this possible?
Thanks in advance!
I don't think you can skip rows in a different format with BULK INSERT/BCP.
When I run this:
TRUNCATE TABLE so1029384
BULK INSERT so1029384
FROM 'C:\Data\test\so1029384.txt'
WITH
(
--FIRSTROW = 2,
FIELDTERMINATOR= '|',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
SELECT * FROM so1029384
I get:
col1 col2 col3
-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------
***A NICE HEADER HERE***
0000001234 SSNV 00013893-03JUN09
0000005678 ABCD 00013893-03JUN09
0000009112 0000 00013893-03JUN09
0000009112 0000 00013893-03JUN09
It looks like it requires the '|' even in the header data, because it reads up to that into the first column - swallowing up a newline into the first column. Obviously if you include a field terminator parameter, it expects that every row MUST have one.
You could strip the row with a pre-processing step. Another possibility is to select only complete rows, then process them (exluding the header). Or use a tool which can handle this, like SSIS.
Maybe check that the header has the same line-ending as the actual data rows (as specified in ROWTERMINATOR)?
Update: from MSDN:
The FIRSTROW attribute is not intended
to skip column headers. Skipping
headers is not supported by the BULK
INSERT statement. When skipping rows,
the SQL Server Database Engine looks
only at the field terminators, and
does not validate the data in the
fields of skipped rows.
I found it easiest to just read the entire line into one column then parse out the data using XML.
IF (OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#data') IS NOT NULL) DROP TABLE #data
CREATE TABLE #data (data VARCHAR(MAX))
BULK INSERT #data FROM 'E:\filefromabove.txt' WITH (FIRSTROW = 2, ROWTERMINATOR = '\n')
IF (OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#dataXml') IS NOT NULL) DROP TABLE #dataXml
CREATE TABLE #dataXml (ID INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, data XML)
INSERT #dataXml (data)
SELECT CAST('<r><d>' + REPLACE(data, '|', '</d><d>') + '</d></r>' AS XML)
FROM #data
SELECT d.data.value('(/r//d)[1]', 'varchar(max)') AS col1,
d.data.value('(/r//d)[2]', 'varchar(max)') AS col2,
d.data.value('(/r//d)[3]', 'varchar(max)') AS col3
FROM #dataXml d
You can use the below snippet
BULK INSERT TextData
FROM 'E:\filefromabove.txt'
WITH
(
FIRSTROW = 2,
FIELDTERMINATOR = '|', --CSV field delimiter
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n', --Use to shift the control to next row
ERRORFILE = 'E:\ErrorRows.csv',
TABLOCK
)
To let SQL handle quote escape and everything else do this
BULK INSERT Test_CSV
FROM 'C:\MyCSV.csv'
WITH (
FORMAT='CSV'
--FIRSTROW = 2, --uncomment this if your CSV contains header, so start parsing at line 2
);
In regards to other answers, here is valuable info as well:
I keep seeing this in all answers: ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
The \n means LF and it is Linux style EOL
In Windows the EOL is made of 2 chars CRLF so you need ROWTERMINATOR = '\r\n'
Given how mangled some data can look after BCP importing into SQL Server from non-SQL data sources, I'd suggest doing all the BCP import into some scratch tables first.
For example
truncate table Address_Import_tbl
BULK INSERT dbo.Address_Import_tbl
FROM 'E:\external\SomeDataSource\Address.csv'
WITH (
FIELDTERMINATOR = '|', ROWTERMINATOR = '\n', MAXERRORS = 10
)
Make sure all the columns in Address_Import_tbl are nvarchar(), to make it as agnostic as possible, and avoid type conversion errors.
Then apply whatever fixes you need to Address_Import_tbl. Like deleting the unwanted header.
Then run a INSERT SELECT query, to copy from Address_Import_tbl to Address_tbl, along with any datatype conversions you need. For example, to cast imported dates to SQL DATETIME.