PostgreSQL Copy To - CSV filename encoding - postgresql

I have a database setup with a UTF-8 encoding. Trying to copy a table to csv, where the filename has a special character writes out the filename wrong to disk.
On a Windows 10 localhost PostgreSQL installation:
copy
(select 'tønder')
to 'C:\temp\Sønderborg.csv' (FORMAT CSV, HEADER TRUE, DELIMITER ';', ENCODING 'UTF8');
Names the csv file: Sønderborg.csv and not Sønderborg.csv.
Both
SHOW CLIENT ENCODING;
SHOW SERVER_ENCODING;
returns UTF8
How can one control the csv filename encoding? The encoding inside the csv is ok writing Tønder!
UPDATE
I have run the copy command from pgAdmin, DataGrip and a psql console. DataGrip uses JDBC and will only handle UTF8. All three applications writes the csv filename in wrong encoding. The only difference is that the psql console says the client encoding is WIN1252.

I don't think it's possible to change this behaviour. It looks like Postgres assumes that the filename encoding matches the server_encoding (as suggested on the mailing lists here and here). The only workaround I could find was to run the command while connected to a WIN1252-encoded database, which is probably not very helpful.
If you're trying to run this on the same machine as the server itself, then instead of using the server-side COPY, you can run psql's client-side \copy, which will respect your client_encoding when interpreting the file path:
psql -c "\copy (select 'tønder') to 'C:\temp\Sønderborg.csv' (FORMAT CSV, HEADER TRUE, DELIMITER ';', ENCODING 'UTF8')"
Note that cmd.exe (and even powershell.exe) still uses legacy DOS encodings by default, so you might need to run chcp 1252 to set the console codepage before launching psql.

Related

Does pg_dump preserve all Unicode characters when .sql file is ANSI?

I use
pg_dump.exe -U postgres -f "file-name.sql" database-name
to backup UTF-8 encoded databases on PostgreSQL 8.4 and 9.5, Windows host. Some may have foreign characters such as Chinese, Thai etc stored in Characters columns.
The resulting .sql file shows ANSI encoding when opening in Notepad++ (I'm NOT applying ANSI to opened files by default). How do I know if Unicode characters are always preserved in the dump file? Should I be using an archive (object) backup file instead?
Quote from the manual
By default, the dump is created in the database encoding.
There is no difference in a text file in ANSI encoding and UTF-8 if no extended characters are used. Maybe your dump has no special characters and thus the editor doesn't identify it as UTF-8.
If you want the SQL dump in a specific encoding, use the --encoding=encoding parameter or the PGCLIENTENCODING environment variable

how to pass variable to copy command in Postgresql

I tried to make a variable in SQL statement in Postgresql, but it did not work.
There are many csv files stored under the path. I want to set path in Postgresql that can tell copy command where can find csv files.
SQL statement sample:
\set outpath '/home/clients/ats-dev/'
\COPY licenses (_id, name,number_seats ) FROM :outpath + 'licenses.csv' CSV HEADER DELIMITER ',';
\COPY uploaded_files (_id, added_date ) FROM :outpath + 'files.csv' CSV HEADER DELIMITER ',';
It did not work. I got error: no such files. The two files licneses.csv and files.csv are stored under /home/cilents/ats-dev on Ubuntu. I found some sultion that use "\set file 'license.csv'". It did not work for me becacuse I have many csv files. also I tried to use "from : outpath || 'licenses.csv'". it did not work ether. Appreciate for any helps.
Using 9.3.
It looks like psql does not support :variable substitution withinpsql backslash commands.
test=> \set somevar fred
test=> \copy z from :somevar
:somevar: No such file or directory
so you will need to do this via an external tool like the unix shell. e.g.
for f in *.sql; do
psql -c "\\copy $(basename $f) FROM '$f'"
done
You can try COPY command
\set outpath '\'/home/clients/ats-dev/'
COPY licenses (_id, name,number_seats ) FROM :outpath/licenses.csv' WITH CSV HEADER DELIMITER ',';
COPY uploaded_files (_id, added_date ) FROM :outpath/files.csv' WITH CSV HEADER DELIMITER ',';
Note: Files named in a COPY command are read or written directly by the server, not by the client application. Therefore, they must reside on or be accessible to the database server machine, not the client. They must be accessible to and readable or writable by the PostgreSQL user (the user ID the server runs as), not the client. Similarly, the command specified with PROGRAM is executed directly by the server, not by the client application, must be executable by the PostgreSQL user. COPY naming a file or command is only allowed to database superusers, since it allows reading or writing any file that the server has privileges to access.
Documentation: Postgresql 9.3 COPY
It may have been true when this was originally asked, that psql backslash commands didn't support variable interpolation, but in my PostgreSQL 14 instance that's no longer the case. However, the psql manpage is clear that \copy specifically does not support variable interpolation.

Character with byte sequence 0x9d in encoding 'WIN1252' has no equivalent in encoding 'UTF8'

I am reading a csv file in my sql script and copying its data into a postgre sql table. The line of code is below :
\copy participants_2013 from 'C:/Users/Acrotrend/Desktop/mip_sahil/mip/reelportdata/Participating_Individual_Extract_Report_MIPJunior_2013_160414135957.Csv' with CSV delimiter ',' quote '"' HEADER;
I am getting following error : character with byte sequence 0x9d in encoding 'WIN1252' has no equivalent in encoding 'UTF8'.
Can anyone help me with what the cause of this issue and how can I resolve it?
The problem is that 0x9D is not a valid byte value in WIN1252.
There's a table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252
The problem may be that you are importing a UTF-8 file and postgresql is defaulting to Windows-1252 (which I believe is the default on many windows systems).
You need to change the character set on your windows command line before running the script with chcp. Or in postgresql you can:
SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO 'utf8';
Before importing the file.
Simply specify encoding 'UTF-8' as the encoding in the \copy command, e.g. (I broke it into two lines for readability but keep it all on the same line):
\copy dest_table from 'C:/src-data.csv'
(format csv, header true, delimiter ',', encoding 'UTF8');
More details:
The problem is that the Client Encoding is set to WIN1252, most likely because it is running on Windows machine but the file has a UTF-8 character in it.
You can check the Client Encoding with
SHOW client_encoding;
client_encoding
-----------------
WIN1252
Any encoding has numeric ranges of valid code. Are you sure so your data are in win1252 encoding?
Postgres is very strict and doesn't import any possible encoding broken files. You can use iconv that can works in tolerant mode, and it can remove broken chars. After cleaning by iconv you can import the file.
I had this problem today and it was because inside of a TEXT column I had fancy quotes that had been copy/pasted from an external source.

How to use postgresql copy command with ANSI encoding?

I use PostgreSQL copy command to make a csv file.
COPY (select * from table) from '/tmp/123456.csv' with csv header encoding 'UTF8';
this command is ok
But I want to make file with ANSI encoding, because I want to open it in Microsoft Excel
COPY (select * from table) from '/tmp/123456.csv' with csv header encoding 'ANSI';
this command can't make csv file
Since you seem to be on Windows, maybe you want to use one of the Windows encodings, for example WIN1252 for western European languages.

PostgreSQL Copy to FTP Server

we can use
copy (select * from mytbl) to 'D:/products.csv' with csv header
to import data in mytbl to local disk D
so is it possible to use the same method to upload the file directly into a FTP-Server ?
i tried like this
copy (select * from mytbl) to 'ftp://usrname:mypasswrd#ftp.drivehq.com/masters/3/product/products.csv' with csv header
but got this error
ERROR: relative path not allowed for COPY to file
SQL state: 42602
using PostgreSQL 9.2
PostgreSQL does not support any source/destination for COPY other than a file or stdin/stdout.
What you can do is COPY to stdout and pipe that to a program that writes the data to the ftp dir. psql's \copy is useful for this:
psql -c "\copy mytable to stdout with (format csv, header)" | ncftpput -c my.ftp.host /path/on/host
You can use any tool that accepts the input data on a pipe to write to the remote ftp file; ncftpput is just one option.
A future PostgreSQL version may add support for invoking COPY with a pipe, e.g. COPY ... TO '|/some/command', but there are serious security concerns with running programs under the PostgreSQL user that would make this a superuser-only operation and of questionable safety even then. It's much safer to run the program client-side, and psql is ideal for that.