IMPORT INTO

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The IMPORT INTO statement imports CSV, Avro, or delimited data into an existing table by appending new rows to the table.

Considerations

• IMPORT INTO takes the table offline before importing the data. The table will be online again once the job has completed successfully.
• IMPORT INTO works with existing tables. To import data into a new table, see Import into a new table from a CSV file.
• IMPORT INTO cannot be used during a rolling upgrade.
• IMPORT INTO is a blocking statement. To run an IMPORT INTO job asynchronously, use the DETACHED option.
• IMPORT INTO invalidates all foreign keys on the target table. To validate the foreign key(s), use the ALTER TABLE ... VALIDATE CONSTRAINT statement.
• IMPORT INTO is an insert-only statement; it cannot be used to update existing rows. Imported rows cannot conflict with primary keys in the existing table, or any other UNIQUE constraint on the table.
• IMPORT INTO does not offer SELECT or WHERE clauses to specify subsets of rows. To add a subset of rows to a table, use INSERT.
• IMPORT INTO will cause any changefeeds running on the targeted table to fail.
• IMPORT INTO supports importing into REGIONAL BY ROW tables.
• At the beginning of an IMPORT INTO job, CockroachDB calculates and stores all user-defined types referenced by the table being imported into, including the crdb_internal_region type descriptor used in multi-region clusters. At the end of the job, CockroachDB checks if any user-defined types have been modified. If so, the IMPORT INTO job fails. Do not make modifications to your multi-region configuration or create or alter multi-region tables while running IMPORT INTO jobs.

Before you begin

Before using IMPORT INTO, you should have:

• An existing CockroachDB table to import into. IMPORT INTO supports computed columns and certain DEFAULT expressions.

• Sufficient capacity in the CockroachDB store for the imported data.

• The CSV or Avro data you want to import, preferably hosted on cloud storage. The import file location must be equally accessible to all nodes using the same import file location. This is necessary because the IMPORT INTO statement is issued once by the client, but is executed concurrently across all nodes of the cluster.

Supported DEFAULT expressions

IMPORT INTO supports the following DEFAULT expressions:

• DEFAULT expressions with user-defined types.

• Constant DEFAULT expressions, which are expressions that return the same value in different statements. Examples include:

  • Literals (booleans, strings, integers, decimals, dates).
  • Functions where each argument is a constant expression and the functions themselves depend solely on their arguments (e.g., arithmetic operations, boolean logical operations, string operations).

• random()

• gen_random_uuid()

• unique_rowid()

• nextval()

• Current TIMESTAMP functions that record the transaction timestamp, which include:

  • current_date()
  • current_timestamp()
  • localtimestamp()
  • now()
  • statement_timestamp()
  • timeofday()
  • transaction_timestamp()

Available storage

Each node in the cluster is assigned an equal part of the imported data, and so must have enough temp space to store it. In addition, data is persisted as a normal table, and so there must also be enough space to hold the final, replicated data. The node's first-listed/default store directory must have enough available storage to hold its portion of the data.

On cockroach start, if you set --max-disk-temp-storage, it must also be greater than the portion of the data a node will store in temp space.

Import file location

CockroachDB uses the URL provided to construct a secure API call to the service you specify. The URL structure depends on the type of file storage you are using. For more information, see the following:

• Use Cloud Storage
• Use a Local File Server

You can create an external connection to represent an external storage or sink URI. This allows you to specify the external connection's name in statements rather than the provider-specific URI. For detail on using external connections, see the CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION page.

Required privileges

Table privileges

The user must have the INSERT and DROP privileges on the specified table. (DROP is required because the table is taken offline during the IMPORT INTO.)

Source privileges

You can grant a user the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS system-level privilege to interact with external resources that require implicit access.

Either the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS system-level privilege or the admin role is required for the following scenarios:

• Interacting with a cloud storage resource using IMPLICIT authentication.
• Using a custom endpoint on S3.
• Using the cockroach nodelocal upload command.
• Using HTTP or HTTPS.

No special privilege is required for:

• Interacting with an Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage resource using SPECIFIED credentials. Azure Storage is always SPECIFIED by default.
• Using userfile storage.

We recommend using cloud storage. You also need to ensure that the permissions at your storage destination are configured for the operation. See Storage Permissions for a list of the necessary permissions that each bulk operation requires.

Synopsis

Parameters

Delimited data files

The DELIMITED DATA format can be used to import delimited data from any text file type, while ignoring characters that need to be escaped, like the following:

• The file's delimiter (\t by default).
• Double quotes (").
• Newline (\n).
• Carriage return (\r).

For examples showing how to use the DELIMITED DATA format, see the Examples section below.

Import options

You can control the IMPORT process's behavior using any of the following key-value pairs as a <option> [= <value>].

For examples showing how to use these options, see the Examples section.

For instructions and working examples showing how to migrate data from other databases and formats, see the Migration Overview.

View and control import jobs

After CockroachDB successfully initiates an import into an existing table, it registers the import as a job, which you can view with SHOW JOBS.

After the import has been initiated, you can control it with PAUSE JOB, RESUME JOB, and CANCEL JOB.

If initiated correctly, the statement returns when the import is finished or if it encounters an error. In some cases, the import can continue after an error has been returned (the error message will tell you that the import has resumed in background).

Examples

The following examples make use of:

• Amazon S3 connection strings. For guidance on connecting to other storage options or using other authentication parameters instead, read Use Cloud Storage.
• The default AUTH=specified parameter. For guidance on using AUTH=implicit authentication with Amazon S3 buckets instead, read Cloud Storage Authentication.

Also, note the following features for connecting and authenticating to cloud storage:

• External connections, which allow you to represent an external storage or sink URI. You can then specify the external connection's name in statements rather than the provider-specific URI. For detail on using external connections, see the CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION page.
• Assume role authentication, which allows you to limit the control specific users have over your storage buckets. See Assume role authentication for more information.

Import into a new table from a CSV file

To import into a new table, use CREATE TABLE followed by IMPORT INTO.

1. Create the new table with the necessary columns and data types:

   CREATE TABLE users (
           id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
           city STRING,
           name STRING,
           address STRING,
           credit_card STRING
         );
   

2. Use IMPORT INTO to import the data into the new table:

   IMPORT INTO users (id, city, name, address, credit_card)
       CSV DATA (
         's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
       );
   

Import into an existing table from a CSV file

> IMPORT INTO customers (id, name)
    CSV DATA (
      's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
    );

Import into an existing table from multiple CSV files

> IMPORT INTO customers (id, name)
    CSV DATA (
      's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}',
      's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers2.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}',
      's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers3.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}',
      's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers4.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}',
    );

Import into an existing table using a wildcard

You can specify file patterns to match instead of explicitly listing every file. Paths are matched using the * wildcard character to include matching files directly under the specified path. Use a wildcard to include:

• All files in a given directory (e.g.,s3://bucket-name/path/to/data/*).
• All files in a given directory that end with a given string (e.g., s3://bucket-name/files/*.csv).
• All files in a given directory that start with a given string (e.g., s3://bucket-name/files/data*).
• All files in a given directory that start and end with a given string (e.g., s3://bucket-name/files/data*.csv).

These only match files directly under the specified path and do not descend into additional directories recursively.

IMPORT INTO users (id, city, name, address, credit_card)
  CSV DATA (
    's3://{BUCKET NAME}/*.csv?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  );

Import into an existing table from an Avro file

Avro OCF data, JSON records, or binary records can be imported. The following are examples of importing Avro OCF data.

To specify the table schema in-line:

> IMPORT INTO customers
    AVRO DATA (
      's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.avro}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
    );

For more information about importing data from Avro, including examples, see Migrate from Avro.

Import into an existing table from a delimited data file

> IMPORT INTO customers
    DELIMITED DATA (
      's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={KEY ID}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
    )
    WITH
      fields_terminated_by='|',
      fields_enclosed_by='"',
      fields_escaped_by='\';

Known limitations

IMPORT INTO has the following limitations:

• While importing into an existing table, the table is taken offline.
• After importing into an existing table, constraints will be un-validated and need to be re-validated.
• Imported rows must not conflict with existing rows in the table or any unique secondary indexes.
• IMPORT INTO works for only a single existing table.

• IMPORT INTO can sometimes fail with a "context canceled" error, or can restart itself many times without ever finishing. If this is happening, it is likely due to a high amount of disk contention. This can be mitigated by setting the kv.bulk_io_write.max_rate cluster setting to a value below your max disk write speed. For example, to set it to 10MB/s, execute:

  SET CLUSTER SETTING kv.bulk_io_write.max_rate = '10MB';
  

See also

• Migration Overview
• Use Cloud Storage
• Import Performance Best Practices