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1.1 (stable)
CSV Import

Examples

The following examples use the flights.csv file.

Read a CSV file from disk, auto-infer options:

SELECT * FROM 'flights.csv';

Use the read_csv function with custom options:

SELECT *
FROM read_csv('flights.csv',
    delim = '|',
    header = true,
    columns = {
        'FlightDate': 'DATE',
        'UniqueCarrier': 'VARCHAR',
        'OriginCityName': 'VARCHAR',
        'DestCityName': 'VARCHAR'
    });

Read a CSV from stdin, auto-infer options:

cat flights.csv | duckdb -c "SELECT * FROM read_csv('/dev/stdin')"

Read a CSV file into a table:

CREATE TABLE ontime (
    FlightDate DATE,
    UniqueCarrier VARCHAR,
    OriginCityName VARCHAR,
    DestCityName VARCHAR
);
COPY ontime FROM 'flights.csv';

Alternatively, create a table without specifying the schema manually using a CREATE TABLE .. AS SELECT statement:

CREATE TABLE ontime AS
    SELECT * FROM 'flights.csv';

We can use the FROM-first syntax to omit SELECT *.

CREATE TABLE ontime AS
    FROM 'flights.csv';

Write the result of a query to a CSV file.

COPY (SELECT * FROM ontime) TO 'flights.csv' WITH (HEADER, DELIMITER '|');

If we serialize the entire table, we can simply refer to it with its name.

COPY ontime TO 'flights.csv' WITH (HEADER, DELIMITER '|');

CSV Loading

CSV loading, i.e., importing CSV files to the database, is a very common, and yet surprisingly tricky, task. While CSVs seem simple on the surface, there are a lot of inconsistencies found within CSV files that can make loading them a challenge. CSV files come in many different varieties, are often corrupt, and do not have a schema. The CSV reader needs to cope with all of these different situations.

The DuckDB CSV reader can automatically infer which configuration flags to use by analyzing the CSV file using the CSV sniffer. This will work correctly in most situations, and should be the first option attempted. In rare situations where the CSV reader cannot figure out the correct configuration it is possible to manually configure the CSV reader to correctly parse the CSV file. See the auto detection page for more information.

Parameters

Below are parameters that can be passed to the CSV reader. These parameters are accepted by the read_csv function. But not all parameters are accepted by the COPY statement.

Name Description Type Default
all_varchar Option to skip type detection for CSV parsing and assume all columns to be of type VARCHAR. This option is only supported by the read_csv function. BOOL false
allow_quoted_nulls Option to allow the conversion of quoted values to NULL values BOOL true
auto_detect Enables auto detection of CSV parameters. BOOL true
auto_type_candidates This option allows you to specify the types that the sniffer will use when detecting CSV column types. The VARCHAR type is always included in the detected types (as a fallback option). See example. TYPE[] default types
columns A struct that specifies the column names and column types contained within the CSV file (e.g., {'col1': 'INTEGER', 'col2': 'VARCHAR'}). Using this option implies that auto detection is not used. STRUCT (empty)
compression The compression type for the file. By default this will be detected automatically from the file extension (e.g., t.csv.gz will use gzip, t.csv will use none). Options are none, gzip, zstd. VARCHAR auto
dateformat Specifies the date format to use when parsing dates. See Date Format. VARCHAR (empty)
decimal_separator The decimal separator of numbers. VARCHAR .
delimiter Specifies the delimiter character that separates columns within each row (line) of the file. Alias for sep. This option is only available in the COPY statement. VARCHAR ,
delim Specifies the delimiter character that separates columns within each row (line) of the file. Alias for sep. VARCHAR ,
escape Specifies the string that should appear before a data character sequence that matches the quote value. VARCHAR "
filename Whether or not an extra filename column should be included in the result. BOOL false
force_not_null Do not match the specified columns' values against the NULL string. In the default case where the NULL string is empty, this means that empty values will be read as zero-length strings rather than NULLs. VARCHAR[] []
header Specifies that the file contains a header line with the names of each column in the file. BOOL false
hive_partitioning Whether or not to interpret the path as a Hive partitioned path. BOOL false
ignore_errors Option to ignore any parsing errors encountered – and instead ignore rows with errors. BOOL false
max_line_size The maximum line size in bytes. BIGINT 2097152
names The column names as a list, see example. VARCHAR[] (empty)
new_line Set the new line character(s) in the file. Options are '\r','\n', or '\r\n'. Note that the CSV parser only distinguishes between single-character and double-character line delimiters. Therefore, it does not differentiate between '\r' and '\n'. VARCHAR (empty)
normalize_names Boolean value that specifies whether or not column names should be normalized, removing any non-alphanumeric characters from them. BOOL false
null_padding If this option is enabled, when a row lacks columns, it will pad the remaining columns on the right with NULL values. BOOL false
nullstr Specifies the string that represents a NULL value or (since v0.10.2) a list of strings that represent a NULL value. VARCHAR or VARCHAR[] (empty)
parallel Whether or not the parallel CSV reader is used. BOOL true
quote Specifies the quoting string to be used when a data value is quoted. VARCHAR "
sample_size The number of sample rows for auto detection of parameters. BIGINT 20480
sep Specifies the delimiter character that separates columns within each row (line) of the file. Alias for delim. VARCHAR ,
skip The number of lines at the top of the file to skip. BIGINT 0
timestampformat Specifies the date format to use when parsing timestamps. See Date Format. VARCHAR (empty)
types or dtypes The column types as either a list (by position) or a struct (by name). Example here. VARCHAR[] or STRUCT (empty)
union_by_name Whether the columns of multiple schemas should be unified by name, rather than by position. Note that using this option increases memory consumption. BOOL false

auto_type_candidates Details

The auto_type_candidates option lets you specify the data types that should be considered by the CSV reader for column data type detection. Usage example:

SELECT * FROM read_csv('csv_file.csv', auto_type_candidates = ['BIGINT', 'DATE']);

The default value for the auto_type_candidates option is ['SQLNULL', 'BOOLEAN', 'BIGINT', 'DOUBLE', 'TIME', 'DATE', 'TIMESTAMP', 'VARCHAR'].

CSV Functions

The read_csv automatically attempts to figure out the correct configuration of the CSV reader using the CSV sniffer. It also automatically deduces types of columns. If the CSV file has a header, it will use the names found in that header to name the columns. Otherwise, the columns will be named column0, column1, column2, .... An example with the flights.csv file:

SELECT * FROM read_csv('flights.csv');
FlightDate UniqueCarrier OriginCityName DestCityName
1988-01-01 AA New York, NY Los Angeles, CA
1988-01-02 AA New York, NY Los Angeles, CA
1988-01-03 AA New York, NY Los Angeles, CA

The path can either be a relative path (relative to the current working directory) or an absolute path.

We can use read_csv to create a persistent table as well:

CREATE TABLE ontime AS
    SELECT * FROM read_csv('flights.csv');
DESCRIBE ontime;
column_name column_type null key default extra
FlightDate DATE YES NULL NULL NULL
UniqueCarrier VARCHAR YES NULL NULL NULL
OriginCityName VARCHAR YES NULL NULL NULL
DestCityName VARCHAR YES NULL NULL NULL
SELECT * FROM read_csv('flights.csv', sample_size = 20_000);

If we set delim/sep, quote, escape, or header explicitly, we can bypass the automatic detection of this particular parameter:

SELECT * FROM read_csv('flights.csv', header = true);

Multiple files can be read at once by providing a glob or a list of files. Refer to the multiple files section for more information.

Writing Using the COPY Statement

The COPY statement can be used to load data from a CSV file into a table. This statement has the same syntax as the one used in PostgreSQL. To load the data using the COPY statement, we must first create a table with the correct schema (which matches the order of the columns in the CSV file and uses types that fit the values in the CSV file). COPY detects the CSV's configuration options automatically.

CREATE TABLE ontime (
    flightdate DATE,
    uniquecarrier VARCHAR,
    origincityname VARCHAR,
    destcityname VARCHAR
);
COPY ontime FROM 'flights.csv';
SELECT * FROM ontime;
flightdate uniquecarrier origincityname destcityname
1988-01-01 AA New York, NY Los Angeles, CA
1988-01-02 AA New York, NY Los Angeles, CA
1988-01-03 AA New York, NY Los Angeles, CA

If we want to manually specify the CSV format, we can do so using the configuration options of COPY.

CREATE TABLE ontime (flightdate DATE, uniquecarrier VARCHAR, origincityname VARCHAR, destcityname VARCHAR);
COPY ontime FROM 'flights.csv' (DELIMITER '|', HEADER);
SELECT * FROM ontime;

Reading Faulty CSV Files

DuckDB supports reading erroneous CSV files. For details, see the Reading Faulty CSV Files page.

Limitations

The CSV reader only supports input files using UTF-8 character encoding. For CSV files using different encodings, use e.g., the iconv command-line tool to convert them to UTF-8. For example:

iconv -f ISO-8859-2 -t UTF-8 input.csv > input-utf-8.csv

Order Preservation

The CSV reader respects the preserve_insertion_order configuration option to preserve insertion order. When true (the default), the order of the rows in the resultset returned by the CSV reader is the same as the order of the corresponding lines read from the file(s). When false, there is no guarantee that the order is preserved.

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