Question

I know there’s the LOAD DATA INFILE statement, which allows me to INSERT structured data into a table.

What I’m curious about, is whether it is possible to INSERT contents of a file into single column. So, is something like this:

INSERT INTO my_table (stamp, what) VALUES (NOW(), LOAD DATA INFILE 'my_file');

possible?

Answer 1

Yes it’s possible. You can use the LOAD_FILE() function:

CREATE TABLE my_table (stamp datetime, what text);

INSERT INTO my_table (stamp, what) VALUES (NOW(), LOAD_FILE('/tmp/my_file.txt'));

You’ll have to make sure that the file is readable by MySQL, and that your MySQL user has the FILE privilege. This is the same privilege required for LOAD DATA INFILE.