Bulk insert with text qualifier in SQL Server

Question

I am trying to bulk insert few records in a table test from a CSV file ,

 CREATE TABLE Level2_import 
 (wkt varchar(max),
 area VARCHAR(40),
 ) 


BULK
 INSERT level2_import 
 FROM 'D:\test.csv'
 WITH
 (
 FIRSTROW = 2,
 FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
 ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
 )

The bulk insert code should rid of the first row and insert the data into the table . it gets rid of first row alright but gets confused in the delimiter section . The first column is wkt and the column value is double quoted and has comma within the value .

So I guess I question is if there is a way to tell the BULK INSERT that the double quoted part is one column regardless of the comma within it ?

the CSV file looks like this ,

 "MULTIPOLYGON (((60851.286135090661 510590.66974495345,60696.086128673756 510580.56976811233,60614.7860844061 510579.36978015327,60551.486015895614)))", 123123.22

Answer 1

You need to use a 'format file' to implement a text qualifier for bulk insert. Essentially, you will need to teach the bulk insert that there's potentially different delimiters in each field.

Create a text file called "level_2.fmt" and save it.

11.0
2
1   SQLCHAR   0  8000   "\","      1     wkt         SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
2   SQLCHAR   0  40   "\r\n"      2     area         SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

The first line, "11.0" refers to your version of SQL. The second line shows that your table, [level2_import], has two columns. Each line after that will describe a column, and obeys the following format:

[Source Column Number][DataType][Min Size][Max Size][Delimiter pattern][Destination Column Number][Destination Column Name][Case sensitivity of database]

Once you've created that file, you can read in your data with the following bulk insert statement:

BULK INSERT level2_import
FROM 'D:\test.csv'
WITH 
(
  FIRSTROW = 2,
  FORMATFILE='D:\level_2.fmt'
);

Refer to this blog for a detailed explanation of the format file.

Answer 2

SQL Server 2017 finally added support for text qualifiers and the CSV format defined in RFC 4180. It should be enough to write :

BULK INSERT level2_import 
FROM 'D:\test.csv'
WITH ( FORMAT = 'CSV', ROWTERMINATOR = '\n', FIRSTROW = 2 )