Howto LoadFILE from Remote file - mysql

Question

How can I load a file with "MySQL LOAD FILE" features from remote server?

Answer 1

As stated in the manual for LOAD DATA, you can use the LOCAL keyword:
The LOCAL keyword, if specified, is interpreted with respect to the client end of the connection:
If LOCAL is specified, the file is read by the client program on the client host and sent to the server. The file can be given as a full path name to specify its exact location. If given as a relative path name, the name is interpreted relative to the directory in which the client program was started.
When using LOCAL with LOAD DATA, a copy of the file is created in the server's temporary directory. This is not the directory determined by the value of tmpdir or slave_load_tmpdir, but rather the operating system's temporary directory, and is not configurable in the MySQL Server. (Typically the system temporary directory is /tmp on Linux systems and C:\WINDOWS\TEMP on Windows.) Lack of sufficient space for the copy in this directory can cause the LOAD DATA LOCAL statement to fail.
If LOCAL is not specified, the file must be located on the server host and is read directly by the server. The server uses the following rules to locate the file:
If the file name is an absolute path name, the server uses it as given.
If the file name is a relative path name with one or more leading components, the server searches for the file relative to the server's data directory.
If a file name with no leading components is given, the server looks for the file in the database directory of the default database.
Note that, in the non-LOCAL case, these rules mean that a file named as ./myfile.txt is read from the server's data directory, whereas the file named as myfile.txt is read from the database directory of the default database. For example, if db1 is the default database, the following LOAD DATA statement reads the file data.txt from the database directory for db1, even though the statement explicitly loads the file into a table in the db2 database:
LOAD DATA INFILE 'data.txt' INTO TABLE db2.my_table;
Windows path names are specified using forward slashes rather than backslashes. If you do use backslashes, you must double them.
For security reasons, when reading text files located on the server, the files must either reside in the database directory or be readable by all. Also, to use LOAD DATA INFILE on server files, you must have the FILE privilege. See Section 6.2.1, “Privileges Provided by MySQL”. For non-LOCAL load operations, if the secure_file_priv system variable is set to a nonempty directory name, the file to be loaded must be located in that directory.
Using LOCAL is a bit slower than letting the server access the files directly, because the contents of the file must be sent over the connection by the client to the server. On the other hand, you do not need the FILE privilege to load local files.
With LOCAL, the default duplicate-key handling behavior is the same as if IGNORE is specified; this is because the server has no way to stop transmission of the file in the middle of the operation. IGNORE is explained further later in this section.
LOCAL works only if your server and your client both have been configured to permit it. For example, if mysqld was started with --local-infile=0, LOCAL does not work. See Section 6.1.6, “Security Issues with LOAD DATA LOCAL”.