CSV Configurations for Importing Data

This document introduces CSV configurations for the Import Data service on TiDB Cloud.

The following is the CSV Configuration window when you use the Import Data service on TiDB Cloud to import CSV files. For more information, see Import CSV Files from Amazon S3 or GCS into TiDB Cloud.

Separator

• Definition: defines the field separator. It can be one or multiple characters, but must not be empty.

• Common values:

  • , for CSV (comma-separated values). As shown in the above screenshot, "1", "Michael", and "male" represent three fields.
  • "\t" for TSV (tab-separated values).

• Default: ,

Delimiter

• Definition: defines the delimiter used for quoting. If Delimiter is empty, all fields are unquoted.

• Common values:

  • '"' quotes fields with double-quote. As shown in the above screenshot, "Michael","male" represents two fields. Note that there must be a , between the two fields. If the data is "Michael""male" (without ,), the import task will fail to parse. If the data is "Michael,male" (with only one double-quote), it is parsed as one field.
  • '' disables quoting.

• Default: "

With header

• Definition: whether all CSV files contain a header row. If With header is True, the first row is used as the column names. If With header is False, the first row is treated as an ordinary data row.

• Default: True

Backslash escape

• Definition: whether to parse backslash inside fields as escape characters. If Backslash escape is True, the following sequences are recognized and converted:

  Sequence	Converted to
  \0	Null character (U+0000)
  \b	Backspace (U+0008)
  \n	Line feed (U+000A)
  \r	Carriage return (U+000D)
  \t	Tab (U+0009)
  \Z	Windows EOF (U+001A)

  In all other cases (for example, \"), the backslash is stripped, leaving the next character (") in the field. The character left has no special roles (for example, delimiters) and is just an ordinary character. Quoting does not affect whether backslash is parsed as an escape character.

  Take the following fields as an example.

  • If the value is True, "nick name is \"Mike\"" will be parsed as nick name is "Mike" and written to the target table.

  • If the value is False, it will be parsed as three fields: "nick name is \" , Mike\, and "". But it cannot be parsed correctly because the fields are not separated from each other.

    For standard CSV files, if there are double-quoted characters in a field to be recorded, you need to use two double-quotes for escaping. In this case, using Backslash escape = True will result in a parsing error, while using Backslash escape = False will correctly parse. A typical scenario is when the imported field contains JSON content. A standard CSV JSON field is normally stored as follows:

    "{""key1"":""val1"", ""key2"": ""val2""}"

    In this case, you can set Backslash escape = False and the field will be correctly escaped to the database as follows:

    {"key1": "val1", "key2": "val2"}

    If the content of the CSV source file is saved as JSON in the following way, then consider setting Backslash escape = True as follows. But this is not the standard format for CSV.

    "{\"key1\": \"val1\", \"key2\":\"val2\" }"

• Default: True