LOAD DATA INFILE selectively with external file - mysql

Question

I have a file called /tmp/files.txt in the following structure:
652083 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1055 Mar 15 2012 ./Highstock-1.1.5/examples/scrollbar-disabled/index.htm
652088 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 david staff 102 May 31 2012 ./Highstock-1.1.5/examples/spline
652089 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1087 Mar 15 2012 ./Highstock-1.1.5/examples/spline/index.htm
652074 0 drwxr-xr-x 3 david staff 102 May 31 2012 ./Highstock-1.1.5/examples/step-line
652075 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1103 Mar 15 2012 ./Highstock-1.1.5/examples/step-line/index.htm
I want to insert the filename (col 9), filesize (col 7), and last_modified (col 8)into a mysql table, paths.
To insert the entire line, I can do something like:
LOAD DATA INFILE '/tmp/files.txt' INTO TABLE path
How would I selectively insert the required information into the necessary columns here?

Answer 1

Specify dummy MySQL user variables (e.g. #dummy1) as the target for the unwanted values.
LOAD DATA INFILE '/tmp/files.txt'
INTO TABLE path
(#d1, #d2, #d3, #d4, #d5, #d6, filesize, #mon, #day, #ccyy_or_hhmi, filename)
SET last_modified = CONCAT(#mon,' ',#day,' ',#ccyy_or_hhmi)
With that, the first six values from the input line are ignored (the values are assigned to the specified user variables, which we disregard.) The seventh value gets assigned to the filesize column, the eighth through tenth values (the month day and year/time are assigned to user variables, and then the eleventh value is assigned to the filename column.
Finally, we use an expression to concatenate the month, day and year/time values together, and assign it to the last_modified column. (NOTE: the resulting string is not guaranteed to be suitable for assigning to a DATE or DATETIME column, since that last value can either be a year, or it can be a time.)
(I've made the assumption that table path has columns named filesize, last_modified, and filename, and that there aren't other other columns in the table that need to be set.)
Followup
If the data to be loaded is the output of a find command, I would be tempted to use the -printf action of find, rather than -ls, so I would have control over the output produced. For example:
find . -type f -printf "%b\t%TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM\t%p\n" >/tmp/myfiles.txt
That would give you three fields, separated by tabs:
size_in_blocks modified_yyyy_mm_dd_hh_mi filename
That would be very easy to load into a MySQL table:
LOAD DATA INFILE '/tmp/myfiles.txt'
INTO TABLE path
(filesize, last_modified, filename)