Example: pgloader -I col1:val1,col2:val2
pgloader - Import CSV data and Large Object to PostgreSQL
pgloader [—version] [-c configuration file] [-p pedantic] [-d debug] [-v verbose] [-q quiet] [-s summary] [-n dryrun] [-Cn count] [-Fn from] [-In from id] [-E input files encoding] [Section1 Section2]
pgloader imports data from a flat file and insert it into a database table. It uses a flat file per database table, and you can configure as many Sections as you want, each one associating a table name and a data file.
Data are parsed and rewritten, then given to PostgreSQL COPY command. Parsing is necessary for dealing with end of lines and eventual trailing separator characters, and for column reordering: your flat data file may not have the same column order as the database table has.
pgloader is also able to load some large objects data into PostgreSQL, as of now only Informix UNLOAD data files are supported. This command gives large objects data location information into the main data file. pgloader parse it add the text or bytea content properly escaped to the COPY data.
pgloader issue some timing statistics every commit_every commits (see Configuration for this setting). At the end of each section processing, a summary of overall operations, numbers of rows copied and commits, time it took in seconds, errors logged and database errors is issued.
pgloader is available from pgfoundry at http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgloader/, where you'll find a debian package, a source package and an anonymous CVS.
In order for pgloader to run, you have to edit a configuration file (see Configuration) consisting of Section definitions. Each section refers to a PostgreSQL table into which some data is to be loaded.
print out pgloader version, then quit.
specifies the configuration file to use. The default file name is pgloader.conf, searched into current working directory.
activates the pedantic mode, where any warning is considered as a fatal error, thus stopping the processing of the input file.
makes pgloader say it all about what it does. debug implies verbose.
makes pgloader very verbose about what it does.
makes pgloader very quiet about what it does: only output errors.
makes pgloader print a nice summary at the end of operations.
makes pgloader simulate operations, that implies no database connection and no data extraction from blob files.
makes pgloader issue a truncate SQL command before importing data.
makes pgloader issue a vacuum full verbose analyse SQL command before importing data.
This vacuum is run from shell command /usr/bin/vacuumdb with connection informations taken from configuration file (see Configuration section of this manual page), but without password prompting. If you use this option, please configure your pg_hba.conf in a way no password is prompted (trust).
Number of input lines to process, default is to process all the input lines.
Input line number from which we begin to process (and count). pgloader will skip all preceding lines.
You can't use both -F and -I at the same time.
From which id do we begin to process (and count) input lines.
When a composite key is used, you have to give each column of the key separated by comma, on the form col_name=value.
Please notice using the —from-id option implies pgloader will try to get row id of each row, it being on the interval processed or not. This could have some performance impact, and you may end up prefering to use —from instead.
Example: pgloader -I col1:val1,col2:val2
You can't use both -F and -I at the same time.
Input data files encoding. Defaults to latin9.
is the name of a configured Section describing some data to load
Section arguments are optionnal, if no section is given all configured sections are processed.
The configuration file has a .ini file syntax, its first section has to be the pgsql one, defining how to access to the PostgreSQL database server where to load data. Then you may define any number of sections, each one describing a data loading task to be performed by pgloader.
The [pgsql] section has the following options, which all must be set.
PostgreSQL database server name, for example localhost.
PostgreSQL database server listening port, 5432. You have to fill this entry.
The name of the database you want to load data into.
Connecting PostgreSQL user name.
The password of the user. The better is to grant a trust access privilege in PostgreSQL pg_hba.conf. Then you can set this entry to whatever value you want to.
Set this parameter to have pgloader connects to PostgreSQL using this encoding.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to latin9.
Set this parameter to have pgloader connects to PostgreSQL using this datestyle setting.
This parameter is optionnal and has no default value, thus pgloader will use whatever your PostgreSQL is configured to as default.
When issuing COPY PostgreSQL commands, pgloader will not make a single big COPY attempt, but copy copy_every lines at a time.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to 10000.
The field separator to use in COPY FROM produced statements. If you don't specify this, the same separator as the one given in field_sep parameter will be used.
Please note PostgreSQL requires a single char properly encoded (see your client_encoding parameter), or it abort in error and even may crash.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to field_sep.
For parameter effect description, see below (same name, table local setting).
You can setup here a global escape caracter, to be considered on each and every column of each and every text-format table defined thereafter.
You can configure here how null value is represented into your flat data file.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to '' (that is empty string).
You can configure here how empty values are represented into your flat data file.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to \ (that is backslash followed by space).
You then can define any number of data section, and give them an arbitrary name. Some options are required, some are actually optionnals, in which case it is said so thereafter.
First, we'll go through common parameters, applicable whichever format of data you're refering to. Then text-format only parameters will be presented, followed by csv-only parameters.
The table name of the database where to load data.
The format data are to be found, either text or csv.
See next sections for format specific options.
The absolute path to the input data file. The large object files are to be found into the same directory. Their name can be in the used by pgloader.
In case of errors processing input data, a human readable log per rejected input data line is produced into the reject_log file.
In case of errors processing input data, the rejected input line is appended to the reject_data file.
The field separator used into the data file. The same separator will be used by the generated COPY commands, thus pgloader does not have to deal with escaping the delimiter it uses (input data has to have escaped it).
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to pipe char |.
Set this parameter to have pgloader connects to PostgreSQL using this encoding.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to latin9. If defined on a table level, this local value will overwritte the global one.
Set this parameter to have pgloader connects to PostgreSQL using this datestyle setting.
This parameter is optionnal and has no default. If defined on a table level, this local value will overwritte the global one.
You can configure here how null value is represented into your flat data file.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to '' (that is empty string). If defined on a table level, this local value will overwritte the global one.
You can configure here how empty values are represented into your flat data file.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to \ (that is backslash followed by space). If defined on a table level, this local value will overwritte the global one.
You can define here table columns, by giving their names and optionnaly column number (as found into your data file, and counting from 1) separated by a colon.
columns = x, y, a, b, d:6, c:5
Note you'll have to define here all the columns to be found in data file, whether you want to use them all or not. When not using them all, use the only_cols parameter to restrict.
As of pgloader 2.2 the column list used might not be the same as the table columns definition.
As of pgloader 2.2.1 you can omit column numbering if you want to, a counter is then maintained for you, starting from 1 and set to last value + 1 on each column, where last value was either computed or given in the config. So you can even omit only some columns in there.
In case you have a lot a columns per table, you will want to use multiple lines for this parameter value. Python ConfigParser module knows how to read multi-line parameters, you don't have to escape anything.
Those are special columns not found in the data file but which you want to load into the database. The configuration options beginning with udc_ are taken as column names with constant values. The following example define the column c as having the value constant value for each and every row of the input data file.
udc_c = constant value
The option copy_columns is used to define the exact columnsList given to COPY.
A simple use case is the loading into the same database table of data coming from more than one file. If you need to keep track of the data origin, add a column to the table model and define a udc_ for pgloader to add a constant value in the database.
Using user-defined columns require defining copy_columns and is not compatible with only_cols usage.
This options defines the columns to load from the input data file and the user defined columns, and in which order to do this. Place here the column names separated by commas.
copy_columns = b, c, d
This option is required if any user column is defined, and conflicts with the only_cols option. It won't have any effect when used in a section where no user column is defined.
If you want to only load a part of the columns you have into the data file, this option let you define which columns you're interrested in. only_col is a comma separated list of ranges or values, as in following example.
only_cols = 1-3, 5
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to the list of all columns given on the columns parameter list, in the colname order.
This option conflicts with user defined columns and copy_columns option.
The definition of the colums where to find some blob or clob reference. This definition is composed by a table column name, a column number (couting from one) reference into the Informix UNLOAD data file, and a large object type, separated by a colon. You can have several columns in this field, separated by a comma.
Supported large objects type are Informix blob and clob, the awaited configuration string are respectively ifx_blob for binary (bytea) content type and ifx_clob for text type values.
Here's an example:
blob_type = clob_column:3:ifx_blob, other_clob_column:5:ifx_clob
The UNLOAD command does not escape newlines when they appear into table data. Hence, you may obtain multi-line data files, where a single database row (say tuple if you prefer to) can span multiple physical lines into the unloaded file.
If this is your case, you may want to configure here the number of columns per tuple. Then pgloader will count columns and buffer line input in order to re-assemble several physical lines into one data row when needed.
This parameter is optionnal.
If this option is set to True, the input data file is known to append a field_sep as the last character of each of its lines. With this option set, this last character is then not considered as a field separator.
This parameter is optionnal and defaults to False.
Sometimes the input data file has field values containing newlines, and the export program used (as Informix UNLOAD command) escape in-field newlines. So you want pgloader to keep those newlines, while at the same time preserving them.
This option does the described work on specified fields and considering the escaping character you configure, following this syntax:
newline_escapes = colname:\, other_colname:ยง
This parameter is optionnal, and the extra work is only done when set. You can configure newline_escapes for as many fields as necessary, and you may configure a different escaping character each time.
Please note that at the moment, pgloader does only support one character length newline_escapes.
When both a global (see [pgsql] section) newline_escapes parameter and a table local one are set, pgloader issues a warning and only consider the global setting.
Controls how instances of quotechar appearing inside a field should be themselves be quoted. When True, the character is doubled. When False, the escapechar is used as a prefix to the quotechar. It defaults to True.
A one-character string used by the writer to escape the delimiter if quoting is set to QUOTE_NONE and the quotechar if doublequote is False. On reading, the escapechar removes any special meaning from the following character. It defaults to None, which disables escaping.
A one-character string used to quote fields containing special characters, such as the delimiter or quotechar, or which contain new-line characters. It defaults to ".
When True, whitespace immediately following the delimiter is ignored. The default is False.
Please see the given configuration example which should be distributed in /usr/share/doc/pgloader/examples/pgloader.conf.
The example configuration file comes with example data and can be used a unit test of pgloader.
pgloader has first been a tcl tool written by Christopher Kings-Lynne and Jan Wieck, and then maintained by Jean-Paul Argudo. When it became clear it would be easier to rewrite it in another language than to properly learn tcl and add to the project missing options, pgloader was rewritten in python by Dimitri Fontaine.
pgloader was rewritten to act as an Informix to PostgreSQL migration helper which imported Informix large objects directly into a PostgreSQL database.
Then as we got some data we couldn't file tools to care about, we decided ifx_blob would become pgloader, as it had to be able to import all Informix UNLOAD data. Those data contains escaped separator into unquoted data field and multi-lines fields (\r and \n are not escaped).
Please report bugs to Dimitri Fontaine <dim@tapoueh.org>.
When last line is alone on a COPY command and its parsing ends in error (not enough columns read for example), no information is given back by pgloader.
pgloader is written by Dimitri Fontaine <dim@tapoueh.org>.