Bulk insert with a different schema - sql

I am trying to get data from a csv file with the following data.
Station code;DateBegin;DateEnd
01;20100214;20100214
02;20100214;20100214
03;20100214;20100214
I am trying bulk insert as
BULK INSERT dbo.#tmp_station_details
FROM 'C:\station.csv'
WITH (
FIELDTERMINATOR ='';'',
FIRSTROW = 2,
ROWTERMINATOR = ''\n''
)
But the table tmp_station_details has one extra column as Priority.
Its schema is like
[Station code] [Priority] [DateBegin] [DateEnd]
Now is this possible to bulk insert without altering the schema of the table.

Add FORMATFILE = 'format_file_path' to your "with" block. Refer to BOL: using a format file to skip a table column for an example.

Related

Remove quotation marks using bulk insert in SQL Server

I am trying to use bulk insert for a .txt file, which is separated using a comma, but a few columns also have a double quotes, because of which when bulk insert is used, some rows are not inserted properly.
Also, I have to use bulk insert and not import/export functionality since I am automating my process of inserting the values in the table.
Here is the sample data: test.txt
ID, Date, Phone, Name
1,12/31/2017,"7415236541","Name1"
2,12/31/2017,"8524123652","Name2"
3,12/31/2017,"9853214536","Name2"
I use the following code, but it does not help
BULK INSERT xImportTable
FROM 'C:\Files\CSV\test.csv'
WITH
( FIRSTROW = 2,
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
But this code does not remove the double quotes.

Insert .csv file into SQL Server with BULK INSERT and reorder columns

I make an ASP.NET application and I want to insert data into my SQL Server from a CSV file. I did it with this SQL command:
BULK
INSERT Shops
FROM 'C:\..\file.csv'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ';',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
);
It pretty works but I have an id columns with AUTO INCREMENT option. I want to reorder inserted columns to SQL server increment automatiquely Id column.
How can I do that with BULK method?
(of course, I don't want to edit .csv file manualy :P )
Like I said in my comment: You can't, bulk insert just pumps data in, you can't transform the data in any way. What you can do is bulk insert to staging table(s) and use an insert statement to do what you need to do.
You can do it like this:
-- Create staging table
SELECT TOP 0 *
INTO Shops_temp
FROM Shops;
-- Bulk insert into staging
BULK INSERT Shops_temp
FROM 'C:\..\file.csv'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ';',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
);
-- Insert into actual table, use SELECT for transformation, column order etc.
INSERT INTO Shops(name, etc..)
SELECT name
, etc..
FROM Shops_temp;
-- Cleanup
DROP TABLE Shops_temp;

Ignoring Columns at the end of Bulk Insert Statement

What I'm doing is inserting into a table using bulk insert from a csv. There are fixed number of columns which I need to input.
Code:
BULK INSERT #TEMP FROM 'c:\temp.csv'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ','
, ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
, CODEPAGE = 'RAW'
,FIRSTROW =2
)
Input:
A,B,C,D,E
A,B,C,D,E
Problem:
The column containing the values E are not to be written into the table because there is no column to store those values. When I take these values into the table, the last column is shown like this:
D,E
D,E
Question:
Is there any way to prevent the insertion of column E into the table without using a format file? I cannot use OPENROWSET to get these values as there are some permission issues.
As others have mentioned, you cant ignore a field while doing bulk insert. If you don't have access to the format file, then import into your temp table, and drop the columns you don't need.

Inserting Dates with BULK INSERT

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.

SQL Bulk Insert with FIRSTROW parameter skips the following line

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.