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LOAD DATA

Description

The LOAD DATA statement reads rows from a text file into a table at a very high speed. The file can be read from the server host or a S3 compatible object storage. LOAD DATA is the complement of SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE. To write data from a table to a file, use SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE. To read the file back into a table, use LOAD DATA. The syntax of the FIELDS and LINES clauses is the same for both statements.

Syntax

> LOAD DATA [LOCAL]
    INFILE 'file_name'
    INTO TABLE tbl_name
    [{FIELDS | COLUMNS}
        [TERMINATED BY 'string']
        [[OPTIONALLY] ENCLOSED BY 'char']
    ]
    [LINES
        [STARTING BY 'string']
        [TERMINATED BY 'string']
    ]
    [IGNORE number {LINES | ROWS}]
    [SET column_name_1=nullif(column_name_1, expr1), column_name_2=nullif(column_name_2, expr2)...]
    [PARALLEL {'TRUE' | 'FALSE'}]

Input File Location

  • LOAD DATA INFILE 'file_name': Indicates that the data file to be loaded is on the same machine as the MatrixOne host server. file_name can be the relative path name of the storage location of the file, or it can be the absolute path name.

  • LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE 'file_name': indicates that the data file to be loaded is not on the same machine as the MatrixOne host server; that is, the data file is on the client server. file_name can be the relative path name of the storage location of the file, or it can be the absolute path name.

IGNORE LINES

The IGNORE number LINES clause can be used to ignore lines at the start of the file. For example, you can use IGNORE 1 LINES to skip an initial header line containing column names:

LOAD DATA INFILE '/tmp/test.txt' INTO TABLE table1 IGNORE 1 LINES;

Field and Line Handling

For both the LOAD DATA and SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE statements, the syntax of the FIELDS and LINES clauses is the same. Both clauses are optional, but FIELDS must precede LINES if both are specified.

If you specify a FIELDS clause, each of its subclauses (TERMINATED BY, [OPTIONALLY] ENCLOSED BY) is also optional, except that you must specify at least one of them. Arguments to these clauses are permitted to contain only ASCII characters.

If you specify no FIELDS or LINES clause, the defaults are the same as if you had written this:

FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'

FIELDS TERMINATED BY

FIELDS TERMINATED BY specifies the delimiter for a field. The FIELDS TERMINATED BY values can be more than one character.

For example, to read the comma-delimited file, the correct statement is:

LOAD DATA INFILE 'data.txt' INTO TABLE table1
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',';

If instead you tried to read the file with the statement shown following, it would not work because it instructs LOAD DATA to look for tabs between fields:

LOAD DATA INFILE 'data.txt' INTO TABLE table1
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t';

The likely result is that each input line would be interpreted as a single field. You may encounter an error of "ERROR 20101 (HY000): internal error: the table column is larger than input data column".

FIELDS ENCLOSED BY

FIELDS TERMINATED BY option specifies the character enclose the input values. ENCLOSED BY value must be a single character. If the input values are not necessarily enclosed within quotation marks, use OPTIONALLY before the ENCLOSED BY option.

For example, if some input values are enclosed within quotation marks, some are not:

LOAD DATA INFILE 'data.txt' INTO TABLE table1
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"';

LINES TERMINATED BY

LINES TERMINATED BY specifies the delimiter for the a line. The LINES TERMINATED BY values can be more than one character.

For example, if the lines in a csv file are terminated by carriage return/newline pairs, you can load it with LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n':

LOAD DATA INFILE 'data.txt' INTO TABLE table1
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '"'
  LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';

LINE STARTING BY

If all the input lines have a common prefix that you want to ignore, you can use LINES STARTING BY 'prefix_string' to skip the prefix and anything before it. If a line does not include the prefix, the entire line is skipped. Suppose that you issue the following statement:

LOAD DATA INFILE '/tmp/test.txt' INTO TABLE table1
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','  LINES STARTING BY 'xxx';

If the data file looks like this:

xxx"abc",1
something xxx"def",2
"ghi",3

The resulting rows are ("abc",1) and ("def",2). The third row in the file is skipped because it does not contain the prefix.

SET

MatrixOne only supports SET column_name=nullif(column_name,expr). That is, when column_name = expr, it returns NULL; otherwise, it returns the original value of column_name. For example, SET a=nullif(a,1), if a=1, returns NULL; otherwise, it returns the original value of column a.

By setting the parameter, you can use SET column_name=nullif(column_name,"null") to return the NULL value in the column when loading the file.

Example

  1. The details of the local file test.txt are as follows:

    id,user_name,sex
1,"weder","man"
2,"tom","man"
null,wederTom,"man"

  2. Create a table named user in MatrixOne:

    create database aaa;
use aaa;
CREATE TABLE `user` (`id` int(11) ,`user_name` varchar(255) ,`sex` varchar(255));

  3. Load test.txt into the table user:

    LOAD DATA INFILE '/tmp/test.txt' INTO TABLE user SET id=nullif(id,"null");

  4. The result of the talbe is as below:

    select * from user;
+------+-----------+------+
| id   | user_name | sex  |
+------+-----------+------+
|    1 | weder     | man  |
|    2 | tom       | man  |
| null | wederTom  | man  |
+------+-----------+------+

PARALLEL

For a sizeable well-formed file, such as a JSOLLines file or a CSV file with no line breaks in a line of data, you can use PARALLEL to load the file in parallel to speed up the loading.

For example, for a large file of 2 G, use two threads to load; the second thread first splits and locates the 1G position, then reads and loads backward. In this way, two threads can read large files at the same time, and each thread can read 1G of data.

Enable/Disable Parallel Loading Command Line Example:

--  Enable Parallel Loading
load data infile 'file_name' into table tbl_name FIELDS TERMINATED BY '|' ENCLOSED BY '\"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' IGNORE 1 LINES PARALLEL 'TRUE';

--  Disable Parallel Loading
load data infile 'file_name' into table tbl_name FIELDS TERMINATED BY '|' ENCLOSED BY '\"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' IGNORE 1 LINES PARALLEL 'FALSE';

--  Parallel loading is disabled by default
load data infile 'file_name' into table tbl_name FIELDS TERMINATED BY '|' ENCLOSED BY '\"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' IGNORE 1 LINES;

Note: If the PARALLEL field is not added in the LOAD statement, for CSV files, parallel loading is disabled by default; for JSOLLines files, parallel loading is enabled by default. If there is a line terminator in the CSV file, such as '\n', otherwise it may cause data errors when the file is loaded. If the file is too large, manually splitting the file from the '\n' as the starting and ending point is recommended, then enabling parallel loading.

Supported file formats

In MatrixOne's current release, LOAD DATA supports CSV(comma-separated values) format and JSONLines format file. See full tutorials for loading csv and jsonline.

Examples

The SSB Test is an example of LOAD DATA syntax. Complete a SSB Test with MatrixOne

> LOAD DATA INFILE '/ssb-dbgen-path/lineorder_flat.tbl ' INTO TABLE lineorder_flat;

The above statement means: load the lineorder_flat.tbl data set under the directory path /ssb-dbgen-path/ into the MatrixOne data table lineorder_flat.

You can also refer to the following syntax examples to quickly understand LOAD DATA:

Example 1: LOAD CSV

Simple example

The data in the file locally named char_varchar.csv is as follows:

a|b|c|d
"a"|"b"|"c"|"d"
'a'|'b'|'c'|'d'
"'a'"|"'b'"|"'c'"|"'d'"
"aa|aa"|"bb|bb"|"cc|cc"|"dd|dd"
"aa|"|"bb|"|"cc|"|"dd|"
"aa|||aa"|"bb|||bb"|"cc|||cc"|"dd|||dd"
"aa'|'||aa"|"bb'|'||bb"|"cc'|'||cc"|"dd'|'||dd"
aa"aa|bb"bb|cc"cc|dd"dd
"aa"aa"|"bb"bb"|"cc"cc"|"dd"dd"
"aa""aa"|"bb""bb"|"cc""cc"|"dd""dd"
"aa"""aa"|"bb"""bb"|"cc"""cc"|"dd"""dd"
"aa""""aa"|"bb""""bb"|"cc""""cc"|"dd""""dd"
"aa""|aa"|"bb""|bb"|"cc""|cc"|"dd""|dd"
"aa""""|aa"|"bb""""|bb"|"cc""""|cc"|"dd""""|dd"
|||
||||
""|""|""|
""""|""""|""""|""""
""""""|""""""|""""""|""""""

Create a table named t1 in MatrixOne:

mysql> drop table if exists t1;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> create table t1(
    -> col1 char(225),
    -> col2 varchar(225),
    -> col3 text,
    -> col4 varchar(225)
    -> );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

Load the data file into table t1:

load data infile '<your-local-file-path>/char_varchar.csv' into table t1 fields terminated by'|';

The query result is as follows:

mysql> select * from t1;
+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| col1      | col2      | col3      | col4      |
+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| a         | b         | c         | d         |
| a         | b         | c         | d         |
| 'a'       | 'b'       | 'c'       | 'd'       |
| 'a'       | 'b'       | 'c'       | 'd'       |
| aa|aa     | bb|bb     | cc|cc     | dd|dd     |
| aa|       | bb|       | cc|       | dd|       |
| aa|||aa   | bb|||bb   | cc|||cc   | dd|||dd   |
| aa'|'||aa | bb'|'||bb | cc'|'||cc | dd'|'||dd |
| aa"aa     | bb"bb     | cc"cc     | dd"dd     |
| aa"aa     | bb"bb     | cc"cc     | dd"dd     |
| aa"aa     | bb"bb     | cc"cc     | dd"dd     |
| aa""aa    | bb""bb    | cc""cc    | dd""dd    |
| aa""aa    | bb""bb    | cc""cc    | dd""dd    |
| aa"|aa    | bb"|bb    | cc"|cc    | dd"|dd    |
| aa""|aa   | bb""|bb   | cc""|cc   | dd""|dd   |
|           |           |           |           |
|           |           |           |           |
|           |           |           |           |
| "         | "         | "         | "         |
| ""        | ""        | ""        | ""        |
+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
20 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Add conditional Example

Following the example above, you can modify the LOAD DATA statement and add LINES STARTING BY 'aa' ignore 10 lines; at the end of the statement to experience the difference:

delete from t1;
load data infile '<your-local-file-path>/char_varchar.csv' into table t1 fields terminated by'|' LINES STARTING BY 'aa' ignore 10 lines;

The query result is as follows:

mysql> select * from t1;
+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| col1    | col2    | col3    | col4    |
+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| aa"aa   | bb"bb   | cc"cc   | dd"dd   |
| aa""aa  | bb""bb  | cc""cc  | dd""dd  |
| aa""aa  | bb""bb  | cc""cc  | dd""dd  |
| aa"|aa  | bb"|bb  | cc"|cc  | dd"|dd  |
| aa""|aa | bb""|bb | cc""|cc | dd""|dd |
|         |         |         |         |
|         |         |         |         |
|         |         |         |         |
| "       | "       | "       | "       |
| ""      | ""      | ""      | ""      |
+---------+---------+---------+---------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

As you can see, the query result ignores the first line and and ignores the common prefix aa.

For more information on loding csv, see Import the .csv data.

Example 2: LOAD JSONLines

Simple example

The data in the file locally named jsonline_array.jl is as follows:

[true,1,"var","2020-09-07","2020-09-07 00:00:00","2020-09-07 00:00:00","18",121.11,["1",2,null,false,true,{"q":1}],"1qaz",null,null]
["true","1","var","2020-09-07","2020-09-07 00:00:00","2020-09-07 00:00:00","18","121.11",{"c":1,"b":["a","b",{"q":4}]},"1aza",null,null]

Create a table named t1 in MatrixOne:

mysql> drop table if exists t1;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> create table t1(col1 bool,col2 int,col3 varchar(100), col4 date,col5 datetime,col6 timestamp,col7 decimal,col8 float,col9 json,col10 text,col11 json,col12 bool);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)

Load the data file into table t1:

load data infile {'filepath'='<your-local-file-path>/jsonline_array.jl','format'='jsonline','jsondata'='array'} into table t1;

The query result is as follows:

mysql> select * from t1;
+------+------+------+------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+--------+---------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
| col1 | col2 | col3 | col4       | col5                | col6                | col7 | col8   | col9                                  | col10 | col11 | col12 |
+------+------+------+------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+--------+---------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
| true |    1 | var  | 2020-09-07 | 2020-09-07 00:00:00 | 2020-09-07 00:00:00 |   18 | 121.11 | ["1", 2, null, false, true, {"q": 1}] | 1qaz  | NULL  | NULL  |
| true |    1 | var  | 2020-09-07 | 2020-09-07 00:00:00 | 2020-09-07 00:00:00 |   18 | 121.11 | {"b": ["a", "b", {"q": 4}], "c": 1}   | 1aza  | NULL  | NULL  |
+------+------+------+------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+--------+---------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Add conditional Example

Following the example above, you can modify the LOAD DATA statement and add ignore 1 lines at the end of the statement to experience the difference:

delete from t1;
load data infile {'filepath'='<your-local-file-path>/jsonline_array.jl','format'='jsonline','jsondata'='array'} into table t1 ignore 1 lines;

The query result is as follows:

mysql> select * from t1;
+------+------+------+------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+--------+-------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
| col1 | col2 | col3 | col4       | col5                | col6                | col7 | col8   | col9                                | col10 | col11 | col12 |
+------+------+------+------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+--------+-------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
| true |    1 | var  | 2020-09-07 | 2020-09-07 00:00:00 | 2020-09-07 00:00:00 |   18 | 121.11 | {"b": ["a", "b", {"q": 4}], "c": 1} | 1aza  | NULL  | NULL  |
+------+------+------+------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+--------+-------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

As you can see, the query result ignores the first line.

For more information on loding JSONLines, see Import the JSONLines data.

Constraints

  1. The REPLACE and IGNORE modifiers control handling of new (input) rows that duplicate existing table rows on unique key values (PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE index values) are not supported in MatrixOne yet.
  2. Input pre-pressing with SET is supported very limitedly. Only SET columns_name=nullif(expr1,expr2) is supported.
  3. When enabling the parallel loading, it must be ensured that each row of data in the file does not contain the specified line terminator, such as '\n'; otherwise, it will cause data errors during file loading.
  4. The parallel loading of files requires that the files be in uncompressed format, and parallel loading of files in compressed form is not currently supported.
  5. The load data local dose not support parallel loading now.
  6. When you use load data local, you need to use the command line to connect to the MatrixOne service host: mysql -h <mo-host -ip> -P 6001 -udump -p111 --local-infile.
  7. MatrixOne does not support ESCAPED BY currently. Writing or reading special characters differs from MySQL to some extent.