SELECT INTO#

The SELECT INTO OUTFILE statement is used to export the query results into a file.

Note

The LOAD DATA INFILE statement is complementary to SELECT INTO OUTFILE, which allows users to create a table from a specified file and load data into the table.

Syntax#

SelectIntoStmt
						::= SelectStmt 'INTO' 'OUTFILE' filePath SelectIntoOptionList
						
filePath 
						::= string_literal
SelectIntoOptionList
						::= 'OPTIONS' '(' SelectInfoOptionItem (',' SelectInfoOptionItem)* ')'

SelectInfoOptionItem
						::= 'DELIMITER' '=' string_literal
						|'HEADER' '=' bool_literal
						|'NULL_VALUE' '=' string_literal
						|'FORMAT' '=' string_literal
						|'MODE' '=' string_literal

There are three parts in SELECT INTO OUTFILE.

  • The first part is an ordinary SELECT statement, which queries the data that needs to be exported.

  • The second part is filePath, which defines the file that the data should be exported into.

  • The third part is SelectIntoOptionList, which is an optional part, and its possible values are shown in the following table.

Configuration Item

Type

Default Value

Note

delimiter

String

,

It defines the column separator of the exported file.

header

Boolean

true

It defines whether the exported table will contain a header. It will include header for default.

null_value

String

null

It defines the padding value for NULL, which is string null for default.

format

String

csv

It defines the format of the output file.
csv is the default format.
parquet format is supported in cluster version.

mode

String

error_if_exists

It defines the output mode.
error_if_exists is the default mode which indicates that an error will be reported if the file already exists.
overwrite indicates that if the file already exists, the data will overwrite the contents of the original file.
append indicates that if the file already exists, the data will be appended to the original file.

quote

String

“”

It defines the string surrounding the output data. The string length should be <= 1. The default is “”, which means that the string surrounding the output data is empty. When the surrounding string is configured, every exported field will be surrounded by this string. For example, we configure the surrounding string as "#" and the original data as {1, 1.0, This is a string, with comma}. The output text will be 1, 1.0, #This is a string, with comma#.

Important

Currently, only cluster version supports the escape of quote string. Please guarantee there are not any quote characters in the original string in standalone version.

SQL Statement Template#

SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE 'file_path' OPTIONS (key = value, ...);

Examples#

  • The following SQL command exports the result of a query from table t1 into data.csv file, using , as column delimiter.

SELECT col1, col2, col3 FROM t1 INTO OUTFILE 'data.csv' OPTIONS ( delimiter = ',' );

  • The following SQL command exports the result of a query from table t1 into data.csv file, using | as column delimiter and NULL values are filled with string NA.

SELECT col1, col2, col3 FROM t1 INTO OUTFILE 'data2.csv' OPTIONS ( delimiter = '|', null_value='NA');