IMPORT

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The IMPORT statement imports the following types of data into CockroachDB:

• Avro
• CSV/TSV
• PostgreSQL dump files
• MySQL dump files
• Delimited data files

Considerations

• IMPORT is a blocking statement. To run an import job asynchronously, use the DETACHED option.
• IMPORT cannot be used within a rolling upgrade.
• As of v21.2, certain IMPORT TABLE statements that defined the table schema inline are deprecated. These include running IMPORT TABLE ... CREATE USING and IMPORT TABLE with any non-bundle format (CSV, DELIMITED, PGCOPY, or AVRO) data types. Instead, use CREATE TABLE and IMPORT INTO; see this example for more detail.
• IMPORT can only import data to a new table. For information on how to import into existing tables, see IMPORT INTO.
• For instructions and working examples on how to migrate data from other databases, see the Migration Overview.
• IMPORT cannot directly import data to REGIONAL BY ROW tables that are part of multi-region databases. New in v21.2: Instead, use IMPORT INTO which supports importing into REGIONAL BY ROW tables.

Required privileges

Table privileges

The user must have the CREATE privileges on the target database.

Source privileges

The source file URL does not require the admin role in the following scenarios:

• S3 and GS using SPECIFIED (and not IMPLICIT) credentials. Azure is always SPECIFIED by default.
• Userfile

The source file URL does require the admin role in the following scenarios:

• S3 or GS using IMPLICIT credentials
• Use of a custom endpoint on S3
• Nodelocal, HTTP or HTTPS

We recommend using cloud storage for bulk operations.

Synopsis

Import a table from CSV or Avro

Import a database or table from dump file

Parameters

For import from CSV or Avro

For import from dump file

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 optional key-value pairs as a kv_option. To set multiple import options, use a comma-separated list (see examples).

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

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

Requirements

Prerequisites

Before using IMPORT, you should have:

• The schema of the table you want to import.
• The data you want to import, preferably hosted on cloud storage. This location must be equally accessible to all nodes using the same import file location. This is necessary because the IMPORT statement is issued once by the client, but is executed concurrently across all nodes of the cluster. For more information, see the Import file location section below.

For more information on details to consider when running an IMPORT, see Considerations.

Import targets

Imported tables must not exist and must be created in the IMPORT statement. If the table you want to import already exists, you must drop it with DROP TABLE or use IMPORT INTO.

You can specify the target database in the table name in the IMPORT statement. If it's not specified there, the active database in the SQL session is used.

Create table

Your IMPORT statement must reference a CREATE TABLE statement representing the schema of the data you want to import. You have several options:

• Specify the table's columns explicitly from the SQL client. For an example, see Import a table from a CSV file below.

• Load a file that already contains a CREATE TABLE statement. For an example, see Import a PostgreSQL database dump below.

• Recommended: Since IMPORT TABLE will be deprecated from v21.2, use CREATE TABLE followed by IMPORT INTO. For an example, see Import into a new table from a CSV file.

We also recommend specifying all secondary indexes you want to use in the CREATE TABLE statement. It is possible to add secondary indexes later, but it is significantly faster to specify them during import.

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 for Bulk Operations
• Use userfile for Bulk Operations
• Use a Local File Server for Bulk Operations

Table users and privileges

Imported tables are treated as new tables, so you must GRANT privileges to them.

Performance

• All nodes are used during the import job, which means all nodes' CPU and RAM will be partially consumed by the IMPORT task in addition to serving normal traffic.
• To improve performance, import at least as many files as you have nodes (i.e., there is at least one file for each node to import) to increase parallelism.
• To further improve performance, order the data in the imported files by primary key and ensure the primary keys do not overlap between files.

For more detail on optimizing import performance, see Import Performance Best Practices.

Viewing and controlling import jobs

After CockroachDB initiates an import, you can view its progress with SHOW JOBS and on the Jobs page of the DB Console, and you can control it with PAUSE JOB, RESUME JOB, and CANCEL JOB.

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 for Bulk Operations.
• The default AUTH=specified parameter. For guidance on using AUTH=implicit authentication with Amazon S3 buckets instead, read Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations — Authentication.

Import a table from a CSV file

To specify the table schema in-line:

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
;

To use a file to specify the table schema:

> IMPORT TABLE customers
CREATE USING 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers-create-table.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS_KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
;

Import a table from multiple CSV files

Using a comma-separated list

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

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. A wildcard can be used 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 TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA (
    's3://{BUCKET NAME}/*?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
);

Import a table from a TSV file

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.tsv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
WITH
    delimiter = e'\t'
;

Skip commented lines

The comment option determines which Unicode character marks the rows in the data to be skipped.

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
WITH
    comment = '#'
;

Skip first n lines

The skip option determines the number of header rows to skip when importing a file.

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
WITH
    skip = '2'
;

Import a limited number of rows

The row_limit option determines the number of rows to import. For non-bundled formats, setting row_limit = 'n' will import the first n rows of a table. For bundled formats, this option will import the first n rows from each table in the dump file. It is useful for finding errors quickly before executing a more time- and resource-consuming import. Imported tables can be inspected for their schema and data, but must be dropped before running the actual import.

The examples below use CSV data, but row_limit is also an option for Avro files, delimited data files, PostgreSQL dump files, and MySQL dump files.

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
WITH
    row_limit = '10'
;

Use blank characters as NULL

The nullif option defines which string should be converted to NULL.

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
WITH
    nullif = ''
;

Import a compressed CSV file

CockroachDB chooses the decompression codec based on the filename (the common extensions .gz or .bz2 and .bz) and uses the codec to decompress the file during import.

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv.gz}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
;

Optionally, you can use the decompress option to specify the codec to be used for decompressing the file during import:

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv.gz}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
WITH
    decompress = 'gzip'
;

Import a PostgreSQL database dump

> IMPORT PGDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}' WITH ignore_unsupported_statements;

For this command to succeed, you need to have created the dump file with specific flags to pg_dump, and starting in v21.1 use the WITH ignore_unsupported_statements clause. For more information, see Migrate from PostgreSQL.

Import a table from a PostgreSQL database dump

> IMPORT TABLE employees FROM PGDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}' WITH skip_foreign_keys WITH ignore_unsupported_statements;

If the table schema specifies foreign keys into tables that do not exist yet, the WITH skip_foreign_keys shown may be needed. For more information, see the list of import options.

For this command to succeed, you need to have created the dump file with specific flags to pg_dump. For more information, see Migrate from PostgreSQL.

Import a MySQL database dump

> IMPORT MYSQLDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}';

For more detailed information about importing data from MySQL, see Migrate from MySQL.

Import a table from a MySQL database dump

> IMPORT TABLE employees FROM MYSQLDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}' WITH skip_foreign_keys;

If the table schema specifies foreign keys into tables that do not exist yet, the WITH skip_foreign_keys shown may be needed. For more information, see the list of import options.

For more detailed information about importing data from MySQL, see Migrate from MySQL.

Import a delimited data file

> IMPORT DELIMITED DATA 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  WITH
    fields_terminated_by='|',
    fields_enclosed_by='"',
    fields_escaped_by='"';

Import a table from a delimited data file

> IMPORT TABLE employees
    FROM DELIMITED DATA 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
    WITH
      skip_foreign_keys;

If the table schema specifies foreign keys into tables that do not exist yet, the WITH skip_foreign_keys shown may be needed. For more information, see the list of import options.

Import a 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 TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
AVRO DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.avro}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
;

To use a file to specify the table schema:

> IMPORT TABLE customers
CREATE USING 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers-create-table.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
AVRO DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.avro}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
;

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

Run an import within a transaction

The DETACHED option allows an import to be run asynchronously, returning the job ID immediately once initiated. You can run imports within transactions by specifying the DETACHED option.

The following transactions use CSV data as an example. To use the DETACHED option with IMPORT in a transaction:

> BEGIN;

CREATE DATABASE newdb;

SET DATABASE = newdb;

IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.csv}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
WITH DETACHED;

COMMIT;

The job ID is returned immediately without waiting for the job to finish:

        job_id
----------------------
  592786066399264769
(1 row)

Without the DETACHED option, IMPORT will block the SQL connection until the job completes. Once finished, the job status and more detailed job data is returned:

job_id             |  status   | fraction_completed | rows | index_entries | bytes
---------------------+-----------+--------------------+------+---------------+--------
652471804772712449 | succeeded |                  1 |   50 |             0 |  4911
(1 row)

Import a table from a local file

You can import a file from nodelocal, which is the external IO directory on a node's local file system. To import from nodelocal, a nodeID is required and the data files will be in the extern directory of the specified node.

If a nodeID is provided, the data files to import will be in the extern directory of the specified node:

cd /tmp/node2 && ls

000355.log              cockroach-temp700212211
000357.log              cockroach.advertise-addr
000359.sst              cockroach.advertise-sql-addr
COCKROACHDB_VERSION     cockroach.http-addr
CURRENT                     cockroach.listen-addr
IDENTITY                    cockroach.sql-addr
LOCK                        extern
MANIFEST-000010         logs
OPTIONS-000005          temp-dirs-record.txt
auxiliary

cd /tmp/node2/extern && ls

customers.csv

Then, specify which node to access by including the nodeID in the IMPORT statement:

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
        name STRING,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('nodelocal://2/customers.csv')
;

You can also use the cockroach nodelocal upload command to upload a file to the external IO directory on a node's (the gateway node, by default) local file system.

Known limitation

IMPORT 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

• Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations
• Migration Overview
• Migrate from MySQL
• Migrate from PostgreSQL
• Migrate from CSV
• Migrate from Avro
• IMPORT INTO

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