COPY moves data between DuckDB tables and external Comma Separated Value (CSV) or Parquet files. The Parquet extension must be installed in order to operate on Parquet files, although many clients bundle the Parquet extension by default (Ex: Python, the Command Line Interface/CLI etc.). For more Parquet examples, see the Parquet Files page.

CSV or Parquet Import

COPY ... FROM imports data into DuckDB from an external CSV or Parquet file into an existing table. The data is appended to whatever data is in the table already. The amount of columns inside the file must match the amount of columns in the table table_name, and the contents of the columns must be convertible to the column types of the table. In case this is not possible, an error will be thrown.

If a list of columns is specified, COPY will only copy the data in the specified columns from the file. If there are any columns in the table that are not in the column list, COPY ... FROM will insert the default values for those columns

-- Copy the contents of a comma-separated file 'test.csv' without a header into the table 'test'
COPY test FROM 'test.csv';
-- Copy the contents of a comma-separated file with a header into the 'category' table
COPY category FROM 'categories.csv' ( HEADER );
-- Copy the contents of 'lineitem.tbl' into the 'lineitem' table, where the contents are delimited by a pipe character ('|')
COPY lineitem FROM 'lineitem.tbl' ( DELIMITER '|' );
-- Copy the contents of 'lineitem.tbl' into the 'lineitem' table, where the delimiter, quote character, and presence of a header are automatically detected
COPY lineitem FROM 'lineitem.tbl' ( AUTO_DETECT TRUE );
-- Read the contents of a comma-separated file 'names.csv' into the 'name' column of the 'category' table. Any other columns of this table are filled with their default value.
COPY category(name) FROM 'names.csv';
-- Read the contents of a parquet file 'lineitem.parquet' into the lineitem table
COPY lineitem FROM 'lineitem.parquet' ( FORMAT PARQUET );

Syntax

CSV or Parquet Export

COPY ... TO exports data from DuckDB to an external CSV or Parquet file. It has mostly the same set of options as COPY ... FROM, however, in the case of COPY ... TO the options specify how the file should be written to disk. Any file created by COPY ... TO can be copied back into the database by using COPY ... FROM with a similar set of options.

The COPY ... TO function can be called specifying either a table name, or a query. When a table name is specified, the contents of the entire table will be written into the resulting file. When a query is specified, the query is executed and the result of the query is written to the resulting file.

-- Copy the contents of the 'lineitem' table to the file 'lineitem.tbl', where the columns are delimited by a pipe character ('|'), including a header line.
COPY lineitem TO 'lineitem.tbl' ( DELIMITER '|', HEADER );
-- Copy the l_orderkey column of the 'lineitem' table to the file 'orderkey.tbl'
COPY lineitem(l_orderkey) TO 'orderkey.tbl' ( DELIMITER '|' );
-- Copy the result of a query to the file 'query.csv', including a header with column names
COPY (SELECT 42 AS a, 'hello' AS b) TO 'query.csv' WITH (HEADER 1, DELIMITER ',');
-- Copy the result of a query to the Parquet file 'query.parquet'
COPY (SELECT 42 AS a, 'hello' AS b) TO 'query.parquet' (FORMAT PARQUET);

Syntax

Parameters

Copy Options

Zero or more copy options may be provided as a part of the copy operation. The WITH specifier is optional, but if any options are specified, the parentheses are required. Parameter values can be passed in with or without wrapping in single quotes. See the above note about boolean options as well.

It is recommended that the file name used in COPY always be specified as an absolute path.

The values in each record are separated by the DELIMITER string. If the value contains the DELIMITER string, the QUOTE string, the NULL string, a carriage return, or line feed character, then the whole value is prefixed and suffixed by the QUOTE string, and any occurrence within the value of a QUOTE string or the ESCAPE string is preceded by the ESCAPE string. You can also use FORCE_QUOTE to force quotes when outputting non-NULL values in specific columns.

The CSV format has no standard way to distinguish a NULL value from an empty string. You can use FORCE_NOT_NULL to prevent NULL input comparisons for specific columns.

In CSV format, all characters are significant. A quoted value surrounded by white space, or any characters other than DELIMITER, will include those characters. This can cause errors if you import data from a system that pads CSV lines with white space out to some fixed width. If such a situation arises you might need to preprocess the CSV file to remove the trailing white space, before importing the data into DuckDB.