Question

Somebody, please help me, because my head going to explode.

I’m trying to import data in sqlite3. I have promos.sql and promos.csv files. I’ve tried to run this in the sqlite shell:

.read promos.sql

Or do this at a unix prompt:

sqlite3 development.sqlite3<promos.sqlite3

and each time I get error

Error: near line 1: near ",": syntax error  
Error: near line 18: near ",": syntax error e.t.c.

In file are following rows:

INSERT INTO promos (name, promo_type, category, phone, email, message, created_at)  VALUES  
('John', 1, 3, '[phone]', '[e-mail]', 'Some message', '2009-09-24 12:17:17'),etc

so, it complains on error in each line where goes columns enumeration.

If I try

.import promos.csv promos

it says:

Error: promos.csv line 1: expected 9 columns of data but found 1

but in file are 9 columns as expected:

"13","John","1","3","[phone]","[e-mail]","Some message","2009-09-24 15:17:17", "2009-09-24 15:17:17"

Why is it not working?

Answer 1

For the sql problem: do you have commas at the end of your INSERT statments instead of semicolons like you should have? Please post several lines of your sql file that you’re trying to run, and also post the CREATE TABLE statement for promos.

For the csv problem: sqlite uses | as the default separator, so you’ll have to set it to use comma. Furthermore, sqlite import doesn’t recognise quoted columns so if you’ll have commas in your data you’re best using a different method to import the data. See this article for details.