Include headers when using SELECT INTO OUTFILE?

Question

You'd have to hard code those headers yourself. Something like:

SELECT 'ColName1', 'ColName2', 'ColName3'
UNION ALL
SELECT ColName1, ColName2, ColName3
    FROM YourTable
    INTO OUTFILE '/path/outfile'

The solution provided by Joe Steanelli works, but making a list of columns is inconvenient when dozens or hundreds of columns are involved. Here's how to get column list of table my_table in my_schema.

-- override GROUP_CONCAT limit of 1024 characters to avoid a truncated result
set session group_concat_max_len = 1000000;

select GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT("'",COLUMN_NAME,"'"))
from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'my_table'
AND TABLE_SCHEMA = 'my_schema'
order BY ORDINAL_POSITION

Now you can copy & paste the resulting row as first statement in Joe's method.

For complex select with ORDER BY I use the following:

SELECT * FROM (
    SELECT 'Column name #1', 'Column name #2', 'Column name ##'
    UNION ALL
    (
        // complex SELECT statement with WHERE, ORDER BY, GROUP BY etc.
    )
) resulting_set
INTO OUTFILE '/path/to/file';

This will alow you to have ordered columns and/or a limit

SELECT 'ColName1', 'ColName2', 'ColName3'
UNION ALL
SELECT * from (SELECT ColName1, ColName2, ColName3
    FROM YourTable order by ColName1 limit 3) a
    INTO OUTFILE '/path/outfile';

You can use prepared statement with lucek's answer and export dynamically table with columns name in CSV :

--If your table has too many columns
SET GLOBAL group_concat_max_len = 100000000;
--Prepared statement
SET @SQL = ( select CONCAT('SELECT * INTO OUTFILE \'YOUR_PATH\' FIELDS TERMINATED BY \',\' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY \'"\' ESCAPED BY \'\' LINES TERMINATED BY \'\\n\' FROM (SELECT ', GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT("'",COLUMN_NAME,"'")),' UNION select * from YOUR_TABLE) as tmp') from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'YOUR_TABLE' AND TABLE_SCHEMA = 'YOUR_SCHEMA' order BY ORDINAL_POSITION );
--Execute it
PREPARE stmt FROM @SQL;
EXECUTE stmt;

Thank lucek.

I simply make 2 queries, first to get query output (limit 1) with column names (no hardcode, no problems with Joins, Order by, custom column names, etc), and second to make query itself, and combine files into one CSV file:

CSVHEAD=`/usr/bin/mysql $CONNECTION_STRING -e "$QUERY limit 1;"|head -n1|xargs|sed -e "s/ /'\;'/g"`
echo "\'$CSVHEAD\'" > $TMP/head.txt
/usr/bin/mysql $CONNECTION_STRING -e "$QUERY into outfile '${TMP}/data.txt' fields terminated by ';' optionally enclosed by '\"' escaped by '' lines terminated by '\r\n';"
cat $TMP/head.txt $TMP/data.txt > $TMP/data.csv