Importing a CSV into a database using DBeaver

2018-06-12 3 min read Analyst

Update: August 12, 2018

The following post demonstrates how to import CSVs using Dbeaver’s database to database export & import feature. If you are certain of the quality of your CSV & just want to import it quickly my subsequent post may be more useful.

0) Install DBeaver

You can find installation instructions here

1) Create a folder to be used as your CSV Database

mkdir ~/desktop/csvs

Place the CSV you want to load into this folder

2) Create a CSV database connection

In the menu bar select Database > Create a New Connection & from the list of drivers select Flat files(CSV) > CSV/DBF

select_driver

Set the path of the connection to the folder you created earlier (the JDBC URL will auto-populate)

configure_path

Note: If you run into trouble downloading the driver navigate to the source website and download the driver manually

3) Connect to your target database

3.1) Navigate through your target database & schema and right click on your target table and select import table data

import_table_data

3.2) Next select your source CSV from your CSV connection as the source container

select_csv_table

Note: In this example case I’m loading a test CSV into a Postgres database but this functionality works with any connection that DBeaver supports (which is basically everything)

4) Ensure that the mappings of each of your columns is correct

For column names that are an exact match DBeaver will automatically map them for you
For the remaining columns make sure to map the source columns to your desired target columns

map_columns

5) Complete the wizard and watch DBeaver import your data

Note: For large files it may be necessary to go get lunch but in my case 4 records doesn’t take long to import :)

data_finished

6) Check to make sure that the data has loaded correctly

As a last optional step it is good practice to make sure that everything loaded correctly which can easily be done by running a query against your target DB

data_in_table

7) Final Notes & Thoughts

While this process takes a little bit more time to get setup than other tools setting up the CSV connection only needs to be done once
- One side benefit of this as well is that you are now able to run SQL queries against CSVs very easily
The only real pain point that I have run across is that if you add a new CSV file or add/delete columns in an active CSV connection you have to cancel the import wizard & refresh the CSV connection for the changes to be picked up
- this feedback was provided in issue 926 and hopefully it will be resolved in a future update

SQL DBeaver CSV