Question

When I import a csv file into MySQL (phpmyadmin), for all integer values that are not specified in the file but have a default of null there is an error message: #1366 - Incorrect integer value: '' for column 'id' at row 1.. I have these questions:

a. How do I import a csv file that does not have the row-id specified if the DB table has that id defined as auto-increment?

b. What do I need in the csv file or in the table column specification in phpmyadmin for integer column that have a default of null?

Here is are sample rows from the csv file.

id,year,month,date,day,description,ranking
,,3,1,,,
,,3,2,,,
,,3,3,,,
,,3,4,,,
,,3,5,,,
,,3,6,,,
,,3,7,,,
,,3,7,,"Saints Perpetua and Felicity, Martyrs",
,,3,8,,,
,,3,8,,"Saint John of God, Religious",
,,3,9,,,
,,3,9,,"Saint Frances of Rome, Religious",
,,3,10,,,

The columns that cause the error are id, year, ranking. They are all integer columns. The column id is auto increment. The other columns are INT(11) with a default of NULL. Thanks.

Answer 1

CSV has no concept of “Nulls”. It’s impossible to differentiate between a field that is null, and a field that has a legitimately empty value (e.g. empty string). You’ll have to massage the rows as you load them prior to query insertion, to replace any ’empty strings’ with appropriate NULLs

e.g.

$row = fgetcsv(...);
$row[0] = 'NULL';