[postgis-users] Import CSV (was: Noob question with shp2pgsql)

Nathan Hemenway nhemenway at kksbolash.com
Sat Apr 13 12:41:24 PDT 2013


As Richard Greenwood noted, ogr2ogr works great for importing CSV files 
into Postgres tables.
In fact, your CSV file does not necessarily even need to have any 
geometry related columns for this to work.

It is all documented here very nicely:

http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_csv.html



On 4/13/2013 5:54 AM, Margie Roswell wrote:
> I figured out that COPY is used to import a file into a table.
>
> (Actually, even though I don't speak a word of Portuguese, a 
> Portuguese video did a great job of showing copying first into a temp 
> table: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwsnPPub9v4 )
>
> But the shp2pgsql thread yesterday got me thinking: to import a 
> shapefile, they've created a utility so that /we don't have to set up 
> the structure of the table in advance/
>
> Is there something similar on the CSV side?
>
> My guess is that http://www.safe.com/solutions/for-databases/postgis/
> might have something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
>
> Details on that?
>
> Also, I'm sure there's a fee for that. Are there any other strategies 
> for making the table creation more efficient, when importing a file to 
> a table?
>
> I suppose I could copy and paste the field names from the top row in 
> the original Excel spreadsheet, and then manually reformat them into a 
> CREATE NEW TABLE statement by adding all the field types. What 
> strategies (like the shp2pgsql utility?) reduce the pain of importing 
> a text file?
>
> Margie
>
> --
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> http://www.BaltimoreUrbanAg.org (Please send events; This site is hungry.)
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>
>
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:14 PM, David Rush <david at rushtone.com 
> <mailto:david at rushtone.com>> wrote:
>
>     Total noob to PostgreSQL and PostGIS here.  Trying to follow
>     examples from the Obe+Hsu book (1st Ed) in using shp2pgsql from
>     the command line to import some tiger county data.
>
>     I ran this:
>
>     shp2pgsql -s 4269 -g geom_4269 -W LATIN1
>     c:/users/david/downloads/tl_2012_us_county/tl_2012_us_county.shp
>     public.us_counties psql -h localhost -U postgres -p 5432 -d mygisdb
>
>     Thanks to an archive of this list that led me to add the "-W
>     LATIN1" param (it was failing with an error w/out it).
>
>     Now the command runs for several minutes, spitting out mostly
>     zillions of hex digits, with no overt errors.  Last line it spits
>     out is "COMMIT;".
>
>     But when I go into psql, I can't find the public.us_counties table
>     that I thought I just added created:
>
>     mygisdb=# select * from public.us_counties;
>     ERROR:  relation "public.us_counties" does not exist
>     LINE 1: select * from public.us_counties;
>                           ^
>     mygisdb=# select table_schema, table_name,table_type from
>     information_schema.tables where
>     table_schema not in ('pg_catalog','information_schema');
>      table_schema |    table_name     | table_type
>     --------------+-------------------+------------
>      public       | geography_columns | VIEW
>      public       | geometry_columns  | VIEW
>      public       | spatial_ref_sys   | BASE TABLE
>      ch01         | lu_franchises     | BASE TABLE
>      ch01         | fastfoods         | BASE TABLE
>     (5 rows)
>
>     Poking around with pgAdmin III I can't find in anywhere, either.
>
>     Is the new table us_counties hiding somewhere?  Or did it quietly
>     fail?  Or what?
>
>     David
>
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>
>
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-- 
.nathan.

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