Question

I’m importing data from a file ‘infile.txt’ and I’m using the table: People (ID is auto_incremented) to insert it into

ID DATE NAME

infile.txt

Ben
Jim
Jack

I’m using this method

LOAD DATA INFILE '~/infile.txt'      
INTO TABLE People
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
(DATE, NAME);

Desired output

   ID  DATE                 NAME
    1  2012-03-06 15:13:40  Ben
    2  2012-03-06 15:13:41  Jim
    3  2012-03-06 15:13:42  Jack

Answer 1

To set your DATE field as a timestamp:

ALTER TABLE `People` CHANGE `DATE` `DATE` TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;

The DATE field will automatically contain the time that the record was inserted, so you just ignore that field in your load. Also DATE isn’t a good choice for a field name, as it’s a reserved word that should be enclosed in backticks.