The EXPORT statement exports tabular data or the results of arbitrary SELECT statements to CSV files.
Using the CockroachDB distributed execution engine, EXPORT parallelizes CSV creation across all nodes in the cluster, making it possible to quickly get large sets of data out of CockroachDB in a format that can be ingested by downstream systems. If you do not need distributed exports, you can export tabular data in CSV format.
EXPORT no longer requires an Enterprise license.
Cancelling export
After the export has been initiated, you can cancel it with CANCEL QUERY.
Synopsis
Required privileges
New in v21.1:
The user must have the SELECT privilege on the table being exported, unless the destination URI requires admin privileges.
Parameters
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
file_location |
Specify the URL of the file location where you want to store the exported CSV data. Note: It is best practice to use a unique destination for each export, to avoid mixing files from different exports in one directory. |
WITH kv_option |
Control your export's behavior with these options. |
select_stmt |
Specify the query whose result you want to export to CSV format. |
table_name |
Specify the name of the table you want to export to CSV format. |
Export file URL
You can specify the base directory where you want to store the exported .csv files. CockroachDB will create the export file(s) in the specified directory with programmatically generated names (e.g., exportabc123-n1.1.csv, exportabc123-n1.2.csv, exportabc123-n2.1.csv, ...). Each export should use a unique destination directory to avoid collision with other exports.
The EXPORT command returns the list of files to which the data was exported. You may wish to record these for use in subsequent imports.
A hexadecimal hash code (abc123... in the file names above) uniquely identifies each export run; files sharing the same hash are part of the same export. If you see multiple hash codes within a single destination directory, then the directory contains multiple exports, which will likely cause confusion (duplication) on import. We recommend that you manually clean up the directory, to ensure that it contains only a single export run.
For more information, see the following:
Export options
You can control the EXPORT process's behavior using any of the following key-value pairs as a kv_option.
| Key | Context |
Value |
|---|---|---|
delimiter |
CSV DATA |
The ASCII character that delimits columns in your rows. If not using comma as your column delimiter, you can specify another ASCII character as the delimiter. Default: ,. To use tab-delimited values: WITH delimiter = e'\t' |
nullas |
CSV DATA, DELIMITED DATA |
The string that should be used to represent NULL values. To avoid collisions, it is important to pick nullas values that do not appear in the exported data. To use empty columns as NULL: WITH nullas = '' |
compression |
CSV DATA |
This instructs export to write gzip compressed CSV files to the specified destination. See the example below. |
chunk_rows |
CSV DATA |
The number of rows to be converted to CSV and written to a single CSV file. Default: 100000. For example, WITH chunk_rows = '5000' for a table with 10,000 rows would produce two CSV files. Note: EXPORT will stop and upload the CSV file whether the configured limit for chunk_rows or chunk_size is reached first. |
chunk_size |
CSV DATA |
A target size per CSV file that you can specify during an EXPORT. Once the target size is reached, the CSV file is uploaded before processing further rows. Default: 32MB. For example, to set the size of each CSV file uploaded during the export to 10MB: WITH chunk_size = '10MB'. Note: EXPORT will stop and upload the CSV file whether the configured limit for chunk_rows or chunk_size is reached first. |
Success responses
Successful EXPORT returns a table of (perhaps multiple) files to which the data was exported:
| Response | Description |
|---|---|
filename |
The file to which the data was exported. |
rows |
The number of rows exported to this file. |
bytes |
The file size in bytes. |
Examples
The following examples make use of:
- Amazon S3 connection strings. For guidance on connecting to other storage options or using other authentication parameters instead, read Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations.
- The default
AUTH=specifiedparameter. For guidance on usingAUTH=implicitauthentication with Amazon S3 buckets instead, read Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations — Authentication.
Each of these examples use the bank database and the customers table; customer-export-data is the demonstration path to which we're exporting our customers' data in this example.
Export a table
> EXPORT INTO CSV
's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
WITH delimiter = '|' FROM TABLE bank.customers;
Export using a SELECT statement
> EXPORT INTO CSV
's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
FROM SELECT * FROM bank.customers WHERE id >= 100;
For more information, see selection queries.
Non-distributed export using the SQL client
$ cockroach sql -e "SELECT * from bank.customers WHERE id>=100;" --format=csv > my.csv
For more information, about the SQL client, see cockroach sql.
Export gzip compressed CSV files
> EXPORT INTO CSV
's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
WITH compression = 'gzip' FROM TABLE bank.customers;
filename | rows | bytes
---------------------------------------------------+------+--------
export16808a04292505c80000000000000001-n1.0.csv.gz | 17 | 824
(1 row)
View a running export
View running exports by using SHOW STATEMENTS:
> SHOW STATEMENTS;
Cancel a running export
Use SHOW STATEMENTS to get a running export's query_id, which can be used to cancel the export:
> CANCEL QUERY '14dacc1f9a781e3d0000000000000001';
Known limitation
EXPORT may fail with an error if the SQL statements are incompatible with DistSQL. In that case, export tabular data in CSV format.
See also
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