Import CSV Pulling One Column Field from Existing Table - mysql

Question

I'm learning MySQL and PHP (running XAMPP and also using HeidiSQL) but have a live project for work that I'm trying to use it instead of the gazillion spreadsheets in which the information is currently located.
I want to import 1,000+ rows into a table (tbl_searches) where one of the columns is a string (contract_no). Information not in the the spreadsheet required by tbl_searches includes search_id (PK and is AUTO_INCREMENT) and contract_id. So the only field I am really missing is contract_id. I have a table (tbl_contracts) that contains contract_id and contract_no. So I think I can have the import use the string contract_no to reference that table to grab the contract_id for the contract_no, but I don't know how.
[EDIT] I forgot to mention I have successfully imported the info using HeidiSQL after I exported the tbl_contracts to Excel and then used it the Excel VLOOKUP function but that ended up yielding incorrect data somehow.

Answer 1

You can do it like this
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/path/to/your/file.csv'
INTO TABLE table1
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' -- or '\r\n' if the file has been prepared on Windows
(#field1, #contract_no, #field2, #field3,...)
SET column1 = #field1,
contract_id = (SELECT contract_id
FROM tbl_contracts
WHERE contract_no = #contract_no
LIMIT 1),
column2 = #field2,
column3 = #field3
...

Answer 2

try something like this: (I am assuming that you have data in tbl_contracts)
<?php
$handle = fopen("data_for_table_searches.csv", "r");
while (($data = fgetcsv($handle,",")) !== FALSE) { // get CSV data from you file
$contract_id = query("SELECT contract_id FROM tbl_contracts WHERE contract_number = " . $data[<row for contract number>]); // whatever is the equivalent in heidi SQL, to get contract id
query("INSERT INTO tbl_searches values($contract_id, data[0], data[1], data[2],...)"); // whatever is the equivalent in heidi SQL, insert data, including contract id into tbl_searches
}
fclose($handle);
?>

Answer 3

Thanks for everyone's input. peterm's guidance helped me get the data imported. Rahul, I should have mentioned that I was not using PHP for this task, but rather just trying to get the data into the tables using HeidiSQL. user4035 asked for more detail and so that's here too.
I have three tables in the database.
tbl_status has two fields, status_ID (AUTO_INCREMENT) and status_name.
tbl_contracts has two columns, contract_ID (AUTO_INCREMENT) and contract_no (a string).
The last table (tbl_searches) will be the active(?) table in that this is where the users' actions will be recorded.
The first two of these tables were easily populated. tbl_status has 11 rows that will describe the status of the contract and these were just typed into an Excel spreadsheet and imported via CSV through HeidiSQL.
For the second table I had 1,000+ "contracts" to import and so I left the first column in Excel blank and the second column containing the string of the contract and imported them the same way.
The third table has seven fields: search_id (AUTO_INCREMENT), contract_id, contract_no, status_id, notes, initials and search_date (I forgot about that one until just now).
I wanted to insert the spreadsheet that had the search information on it into tbl_searches. It has the contract_no, but not the contract_id. I needed to insert the rows and have the query grab the contract_id from tbl_contracts. It took me a bit to get it right without errors and some unexpected results. (The following query omits the need for search_date.)
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '\\\\PATH\\PATH\\PATH\\PATH\\FILENAME.csv'
INTO TABLE `hoa_work`.`tbl_searches`
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"' ESCAPED BY '"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n'
IGNORE 1 LINES --because the first row of the CSV has column headers
(#search_id, #contract_id, #contract_no, #status_id, #notes, #initials)
SET
search_id = NULL, --is an AUTO_INCREMENT field
contract_id = (SELECT contract_id
FROM tbl_contracts
WHERE contract_no = #contract_no
LIMIT 1),
contract_no = #contract_no,
status_id = #status_id,
notes = #notes,
initials = #initials;
/* Affected rows: 1,011 Found rows: 0 Warnings: 0 Duration for 1 query: 0.406 sec. */
I learned here that the #blah are user variables. If I run the following query it will tell me how the variable is defined. Since I was inserting 1,000+ rows from the CSV file it gave me the answer for the last row that it inserted.
SELECT #contract_no
If you have any suggested improvements on the way I ultimately wrote the query please do tell me.
-Matt