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LOAD DATA

The LOAD DATA statement batch loads data into a TiDB table.

Starting from TiDB v7.0.0, the LOAD DATA SQL statement supports the following features:

  • Support importing data from S3 and GCS
  • Add a new parameter FIELDS DEFINED NULL BY

Synopsis

LoadDataStmt
LOADDATALocalOptINFILEstringLitDuplicateOptINTOTABLETableNameCharsetOptFieldsLinesIgnoreLinesColumnNameOrUserVarListOptWithBracketsLoadDataSetSpecOpt
LocalOpt
LOCAL
Fields
TERMINATEDBYstringLitOPTIONALLYENCLOSEDBYstringLitESCAPEDBYstringLitDEFINEDNULLBYstringLitOPTIONALLYENCLOSED

Parameters

LOCAL

You can use LOCAL to specify data files on the client to be imported, where the file parameter must be the file system path on the client.

If you are using TiDB Cloud, to use the LOAD DATA statement to load local data files, you need to add the --local-infile option to the connection string when you connect to TiDB Cloud.

  • The following is an example connection string for TiDB Serverless:

    mysql --connect-timeout 15 -u '<user_name>' -h <host_name> -P 4000 -D test --ssl-mode=VERIFY_IDENTITY --ssl-ca=/etc/ssl/cert.pem -p<your_password> --local-infile

  • The following is an example connection string for TiDB Dedicated:

    mysql --connect-timeout 15 --ssl-mode=VERIFY_IDENTITY --ssl-ca=<CA_path> --tls-version="TLSv1.2" -u root -h <host_name> -P 4000 -D test -p<your_password> --local-infile

S3 and GCS storage

If you do not specify LOCAL, the file parameter must be a valid S3 or GCS path, as detailed in external storage.

When the data files are stored on S3 or GCS, you can import individual files or use the wildcard character * to match multiple files to be imported. Note that wildcards do not recursively process files in subdirectories. The following are some examples:

  • Import a single file: s3://<bucket-name>/path/to/data/foo.csv
  • Import all files in the specified path: s3://<bucket-name>/path/to/data/*
  • Import all files ending with .csv under the specified path: s3://<bucket-name>/path/to/data/*.csv
  • Import all files prefixed with foo under the specified path: s3://<bucket-name>/path/to/data/foo*
  • Import all files prefixed with foo and ending with .csv under the specified path: s3://<bucket-name>/path/to/data/foo*.csv

Fields, Lines, and Ignore Lines

You can use the Fields and Lines parameters to specify how to handle the data format.

  • FIELDS TERMINATED BY: specifies the data delimiter.
  • FIELDS ENCLOSED BY: specifies the enclosing character of the data.
  • LINES TERMINATED BY: specifies the line terminator, if you want to end a line with a certain character.

You can use DEFINED NULL BY to specify how NULL values are represented in the data file.

  • Consistent with MySQL behavior, if ESCAPED BY is not null, for example, if the default value \ is used, then \N will be considered a NULL value.
  • If you use DEFINED NULL BY, such as DEFINED NULL BY 'my-null', my-null is considered a NULL value.
  • If you use DEFINED NULL BY ... OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED, such as DEFINED NULL BY 'my-null' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED, my-null and "my-null" (assuming ENCLOSED BY '") are considered NULL values.
  • If you do not use DEFINED NULL BY or DEFINED NULL BY ... OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED, but use ENCLOSED BY, such as ENCLOSED BY '"', then NULL is considered a NULL value. This behavior is consistent with MySQL.
  • In other cases, it is not considered a NULL value.

Take the following data format as an example:

"bob","20","street 1"\r\n
"alice","33","street 1"\r\n

If you want to extract bob, 20, and street 1, specify the field delimiter as ',', and the enclosing character as '\"':

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

If you do not specify the preceding parameters, the imported data is processed in the following way by default:

FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t' ENCLOSED BY '' ESCAPED BY '\\'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' STARTING BY ''

You can ignore the first number lines of a file by configuring the IGNORE <number> LINES parameter. For example, if you configure IGNORE 1 LINES, the first line of a file is ignored.

Examples

The following example imports data using LOAD DATA. Comma is specified as the field delimiter. The double quotation marks that enclose the data are ignored. The first line of the file is ignored.

If you see ERROR 1148 (42000): the used command is not allowed with this TiDB version, refer to ERROR 1148 (42000): the used command is not allowed with this TiDB version for troubleshooting.

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/mnt/evo970/data-sets/bikeshare-data/2017Q4-capitalbikeshare-tripdata.csv' INTO TABLE trips FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '\"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n' IGNORE 1 LINES (duration, start_date, end_date, start_station_number, start_station, end_station_number, end_station, bike_number, member_type);

Query OK, 815264 rows affected (39.63 sec)
Records: 815264  Deleted: 0  Skipped: 0  Warnings: 0

LOAD DATA also supports using hexadecimal ASCII character expressions or binary ASCII character expressions as the parameters for FIELDS ENCLOSED BY and FIELDS TERMINATED BY. See the following example:

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/mnt/evo970/data-sets/bikeshare-data/2017Q4-capitalbikeshare-tripdata.csv' INTO TABLE trips FIELDS TERMINATED BY x'2c' ENCLOSED BY b'100010' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n' IGNORE 1 LINES (duration, start_date, end_date, start_station_number, start_station, end_station_number, end_station, bike_number, member_type);

In the above example, x'2c' is the hexadecimal representation of the , character, and b'100010' is the binary representation of the " character.

MySQL compatibility

The syntax of the LOAD DATA statement is compatible with that of MySQL, except for character set options which are parsed but ignored. If you find any syntax compatibility difference, you can report a bug.

See also

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