sqlite3 import with quotes

Question

I am trying to import a collection of data that has quotes within the fields. They are currently tab separated.

From what I can understand according to the docs (http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=ImportingFiles), the sqlite shell should interpret quotes literally and I assume that means I shouldn't have a problem.

I've been running into a problem on this line:

1193782372  Lips Like Sugar (12" Mix)   Echo & the Bunnymen 80's/12": The Extended Collection   a76d9b04-51d9-4672-801f-356ab36dbae7    ccd4879c-5e88-4385-b131-bf65296bf245    1abb270a-e791-407f-a989-ff3ad6f8401c

Since it isn't clear where the tabs are, I've included them in this following line.

1193782372\tLips Like Sugar (12" Mix)\tEcho & the Bunnymen\t80's/12": The Extended Collection\ta76d9b04-51d9-4672-801f-356ab36dbae7\tccd4879c-5e88-4385-b131-bf65296bf245\t1abb270a-e791-407f-a989-ff3ad6f8401c

I'm trying to do the following but getting an error.

sqlite> .separator \t
sqlite> .import ./file.txt table
Error: ./file.txt line n: expected 7 columns of data but found 5

It works without the double quotes, but the quotes are important. I don't seem to be able to escape the quotes with \" either.

How can I properly import the data I want?

Answer 1

Sqlite3's .import tool behaves as if its input is in comma-separated-values format, even if .separator is not a comma. You can escape quotes (") by doubling them ("") and quoting the entire field they occur in.

I got a clean .import of your test data after running it through the following filter:

sed 's/"/""/g;s/[^\t]*/"&"/g' file.txt >quoted.txt

Answer 2

To do that without changing the input data or the sqlite source code, use ascii mode and set the column separator to tab and the row separator to CRLF (windows) or "\n" (*nix).

windows:

sqlite> .mode ascii
sqlite> .separator "\t" "\r\n"
sqlite> .import ./file.txt table

*nix

sqlite> .mode ascii
sqlite> .separator "\t" "\n"
sqlite> .import ./file.txt table

See my answer to this question for an explanation of why.

Answer 3

The sqlite3 command-line tool isn't very flexible in what import formats it supports.

You could

• change the import file to add double quotes around and escape double quotes in fields; or

• convert the import file into a series of SQL statements:

  INSERT INTO MyTable VALUES(
      1193782372,
      'Lips Like Sugar (12" Mix)',
      'Echo & the Bunnymen 80''s/12": The Extended Collection',
      'a76d9b04-51d9-4672-801f-356ab36dbae7',
      'ccd4879c-5e88-4385-b131-bf65296bf245',
      '1abb270a-e791-407f-a989-ff3ad6f8401c');
  

  or

• write your own import tool.

Answer 4

The web page you reference is old (note the cvstrac portion of the URL, which is the giveaway; sqlite uses fossil now, not cvs). The newer version of that web page is here.

Since SQLite is public domain software, one solution to your problem is to fix sqlite's shell.c to handle your file format correctly. The problem is around line 1861 that does

if( c=='"' ) inQuote = !inQuote;

If you don't want quote delimiting, just comment out this line. The purpose of the line is so you can embed delimiters in your columns by quoting the column.

Another approach is to use a Database Manager that supports SQLite; there are many of them, and most claim to support file import/export.