I want to import data from an excel sheet into a MySQL database with the MySQL for Excel plugin. In some cells are texts with semicolons and I already figured out this causes a SQL error. I tried escaping the semicolons with backslash but I still get the error message. How can I escape the semicolon?
Kai,
this behaviour is purely the fault of MySQL for Excel, and seem to be a bug.
In the meantime, if you are not keen on changing your Excel data as suggested by others there is a workaround:
In your MySQL-for-Excel window click Options and then select Preview SQL statements before they are sent to the server and Accept.
Then proceed as normal with export / append data using the Add-in, but when a Review SQL script window appears, copy the contents into a different SQL tool (MySQL workbench, HeidiSQL, SQLWorkbench etc), and run. Then click cancel in the Mysql-for-Excel popups, and refresh the query if necessary.
Also: feel free to report the bug at: http://bugs.mysql.com/
Replace the semicolon with some unique text e.g. [SEMICOLON].
Next import the data to SQL and run something like
UPDATE your_table
SET your_field = REPLACE(your_field, '[SEMICOLON]', ';')
WHERE your_field LIKE '%[SEMICOLON]%'
I think all you need to do is consider the requirements Excel has when it imports data from CSV files (the parsing rules are probably the same or similar)
In your case, if a field contains any special characters, just quote the values with double quotes before importing the content in Excel.
So:
UPDATE table
SET field = '"' || field || '"'
WHERE field like '%,%'
The following rules should apply:
Fields containing a line-break, double-quote, and/or commas should be quoted
Any field may be quoted (with double quotes)
A (double) quote character in a field must be represented by two (double) quote characters.
More details: Wikipedia: Comma-separated values
Related
I have a huge CSV file with the data like this:
ID~Name~Location~Price~Rating
02~Foxtrot~Scotland~~9
08~Alpha~Iceland~9.90~4
32~ForestLane~Germany~14.35~
The issue is that when importing using PHPMyAdmin, it asks for Columns enclosed with: and Columns escaped with:. The trouble is, that this CSV doesn't have quotes for the cells.
If I leave this blank, it gives the error: Invalid parameter for CSV import: Columns escaped with
Is there a way to import without having quotes on the CSV?
I can reproduce this behavior. I'll bring it up on the phpMyAdmin development discussion list, but in the meantime, you can can work around it by using some nonsense character for "Columns escaped with" and leaving "Columns enclosed with" blank. Make sure your data doesn't contain, say a " or £ and use that for "Columns escaped with". For instance, I have a data set where I know £ doesn't exist, so I can use that for the "Columns escaped with" character -- if you don't have any escaped characters, you can enter any character there.
I'll update if I can provide any more useful information, but certainly that workaround should allow you to import your data.
I have a CSV file that I need to format (i.e., turn into) a SQL file for ingestion into MySQL. I am looking for a way to add the text delimiters (single quote) to the text, but not to the numbers, booleans, etc. I am finding it difficult because some of the text that I need to enclose in single quotes have commas themselves, making it difficult to key in to the commas for search and replace. Here is an example line I am working with:
1239,1998-08-26,'Severe Storm(s)','Texas,Val Verde,"DEL RIO, PARKS",'No',25,"412,007.74"
This is FEMA data file, with 131246 lines, I got off of data.gov that I am trying to get into a MySQL database. As you can see, I need to insert a single quote after Texas and before Val Verde, so I tried:
s/,/','/3
But that only replaced the first occurrence of the comma on the first three lines of the file. Once I get past that, I will need to find a way to deal with "DEL RIO, PARKS", as that has a comma that I do not want to place a single quote around.
So, is there a "nice" way to manipulate this data to get it from plain CSV to a proper SQL format?
Thanks
CSV files are notoriously dicey to parse. Different programs export CSV in different ways, possibly including strangeness like embedding new lines within a quoted field or different ways of representing quotes within a quoted field. You're better off using a tool specifically suited to parsing CSV -- perl, python, ruby and java all have CSV parsing libraries, or there are command line programs such as csvtool or ffe.
If you use a scripting language's CSV library, you may also be able to leverage the language's SQL import as well. That's overkill for a one-off, but if you're importing a lot of data this way, or if you're transforming data, it may be worthwhile.
I think that I would also want to do some troubleshooting to find out why the CSV import into MYSql failed.
I would take an approach like this:
:%s/,\("[^"]*"\|[^,"]*\)/,'\1'/g
:%s/^\("[^"]*"\|[^,"]*\)/'\1'/g
In words, look for a double quoted set of characters or , \|, a non-double quoted set of characters beginning with a comma and replace the set of characters in a single quotation.
Next, for the first column in a row, look for a double quoted set of characters or , \|, a non-double quoted set of characters beginning with a comma and replace the set of characters in a single quotation.
Try the csv plugin. It allows to convert the data into other formats. The help includes an example, how to convert the data for importing it into a database
Just to bring this to a close, I ended up using #Eric Andres idea, which was the MySQL load data option:
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/path/to/file.csv'
INTO TABLE MYTABLE FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';
The initial .csv file still took a little massaging, but not as much as I were to do it by hand.
When I commented that the LOAD DATA had truncated my file, I was incorrect. I was treating the file as a typical .sql file and assumed the "ID" column I had added would auto-increment. This turned out to not be the case. I had to create a quick script that prepended an ID to the front of each line. After that, the LOAD DATA command worked for all lines in my file. In other words, all data has to be in place within the file to load before the load, or the load will not work.
Thanks again to all who replied, and #Eric Andres for his idea, which I ultimately used.
I have an access DB. I exported tables to xlsx. Then I saved as .ods using openOffice
because I found out that phpmyadmin-mysql no longer supports excel files. I have my mySQL database formated exactly as it should to accept the data. I import and everything seems fine except one little detail.
In some fields, the value is NULL instead of the value it should have according to the .ods file. Some rows show the same value for that field correctly, some show NULL.
Also, the "faulty" rows have some fields that show the value 0 for fields that where empty in the imported file (instead of NULL). Default value for those fields in mySQL is NULL. Each row has many fields like that and all of the same data type (tinyint). Some appear correctly NULL and some have the value 0....
I can't see a pattern on all these.
Any help is appreciated.
Check to see that imported strings have ("") quotes and NULL do not and that all are separated appropriately, usually a "," comma with the record/row delimited by ";" semicolon. Best way to check what the MySQL is looking for is to export some existing data to the same format and check it against what you are trying to import. One little missed quote and the deal is off. Be consistent in the use of either double " quotes or single ' quotes. also the ` character is not used as I think. If you are "squishing" your data through an application that applies "smart quotes" like MS word does or "Open Office??' this too can cause issues. Add the word NULL either inside or without quotes in your csv import where values appropriate.
Take this XLS file
I then save this XLS file as CSV and then open it up with a text editor. This is what I see:
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7
1,ABC,"AB""C","D,E",F,03,"3,2"
I see that the double quote character in column C was stored as AB""C, the column value was enclosed with quotations and the double quote character in the data was replaced with 2 double quote characters to indicate that the quote is occurring within the data and not terminating the column value. I also see that the value for column G, 3,2, is enclosed in quotes so that it is clear that the comma occurs within the data rather than indicating a new column. So far, so good.
I am a little surprised that all of the column values are not enclosed by quotes but even this seems reasonable OK when I assume that EXCEL only specifies column delimieters when special characters like a commad or a dbl quote character exists in the data.
Now I try to use SQL Server to import the csv file. Note that I specify a double quote character as the Text Qualifier character.
And a command char as the Column delimiter character. However, note that SSIS imports column 3 incorrectly,eg, not translating the two consecutive double quote characters as a single occurence of a double quote character.
What do I have to do to get Excel and SSIS to get along?
Generally people avoid the issue by using column delimiter chactacters that are LESS LIKELY to occur in the data but this is not a real solution.
I find that if I modify the file from this
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7
1,ABC,"AB""C","D,E",F,03,"3,2"
...to this:
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7
1,ABC,"AB"C","D,E",F,03,"3,2"
i.e, removing the two consecutive quotes in column C's value, that the data is loaded properly, however, this is a little confusing to me. First of all, how does SSIS determine that the double quote between the B and the C is not terminating that column value? Is it because the following characters are not a comma column delimiter or a row delimiter (CRLF)? And why does Excel export it this way?
According to Wikipedia, here are a couple of traits of a CSV file:
Fields containing line breaks (CRLF), double quotes, and commas
should be enclosed in double-quotes. For example:
"aaa","b CRLF
bb","ccc" CRLF
zzz,yyy,xxx
If double-quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double-quote
appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with
another double quote. For example:
"aaa","b""bb","ccc"
However, it looks like SSIS doesn't like it that way when importing. What can be done to get Excel to create a CSV file that could contain ANY special characters used as column delimiters, text delimiters or row delimiters in the data? There's no reason that it can't work using the approach specified in Wikipedia,. which is what I thought the old MS DTS packages used to do...
Update:
If I use Notepad change the input file to
Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7,Col8
"1","ABC","AB""C","D,E","F","03","3,2","AB""C"
Excel reads it just fine
but SSIS returns
The preview sample contains embedded text qualifiers ("). The flat file parser does not support embedding text qualifiers in data. Parsing columns that contain data with text qualifiers will fail at run time.
Conclusion:
Just like the error message says in your update...
The flat file parser does not support embedding text qualifiers in data. Parsing columns that contain data with text qualifiers will fail at run time.
Confirmed bug in Microsoft Connect. I encourage everyone reading this to click on this aforementioned link and place your vote to have them fix this stinker. This is in the top 10 of the most egregious bugs I have encountered.
Do you need to use a comma delimiter.
I used a pipe delimiter with no Text qualifier and it worked fine. Here is my output form the text file.
1|ABC|AB"C|D,E|F|03|3,2
You have 3 options in my opinion.
Read the data into a stage table.
Run any update queries you need on the columns
Now select your data from the stage table and output it to a flat file.
OR
Use pipes are you delimiters.
OR
Do all of this in a C# application and build it in code.
You could send the row to a script in SSIS and parse and build the file you want there as well.
Using text qualifiers and "character" delimited fields is problematic for sure.
Have Fun!
We have a large tab-delimited text file (approximately 120,000 records, 50MB) that we're trying to shove into MySQL using mysqlimport. Some fields are enclosed in double-quotes, some not. We're using the fields-optionally-enclosed-by='\"' switch, but the problem is some of the field values themselves contain double-quotes (indicating inches) so the delimited field value might be something "ABCDEF19"". Make sense?
We have no control over the source of the file, so we can't change the formatting there. I tried removing the fields-optionally-enclosed-by switch, but then the double-quotes that surround the values are imported.
he records with quotes in the values are getting seriously messed up. Is there a way we can tell mysqlimport that some fields are optionally enclosed by quotes, but may still contain quotes? We've thought maybe a global search and replace to escape the double-quotes in field values? Or any other suggestions?
If your data is including quotes inside of the body of the field quote without delimiting that somehow, you have a problem. You can't guarantee that mysqlimport will do this properly.
Massage the data first before trying to insert it in this way.
Luckily, it is tab-delimited, so you can run a regex to replace the quotes with a delimited version and then tell mysqlimport the delimiter.
You could import it with the quotes (fields-optionally-enclosed-by switch removed) and then run a check where if the value has double quotes at the beginning and end (assuming none of the values have inches at the beginning) then truncate by 1 character from the beginning and end to remove the extra quotes you got from importing.
EDIT: after reading kekoav's response I have to agree that if you are able to manipulate the file before importing that would be a much wiser option, but if you are forced to remove quotes afterwards, you could use something like this:
UPDATE table
SET column =
IF(
STRCMP(LEFT(table.column,1),'"'),
MID(table.column,2,(LENGTH(table.column)-2)),
table.column
)
for every 'column' in 'table'