csvs-to-sqlite
Convert CSV files into a SQLite database. Browse and publish that SQLite database with Datasette.
Basic usage:
csvs-to-sqlite myfile.csv mydatabase.db
This will create a new SQLite database called mydatabase.db containing a single table, myfile, containing the CSV content.
You can provide multiple CSV files:
csvs-to-sqlite one.csv two.csv bundle.db
The bundle.db database will contain two tables, one and two.
This means you can use wildcards:
csvs-to-sqlite ~/Downloads/*.csv my-downloads.db
If you pass a path to one or more directories, the script will recursively search those directories for CSV files and create tables for each one.
csvs-to-sqlite ~/path/to/directory all-my-csvs.db
Handling TSV (tab-separated values)
You can use the -s option to specify a different delimiter. If you want to use a tab character you'll need to apply shell escaping like so:
csvs-to-sqlite my-file.tsv my-file.db -s $'\t'
Refactoring columns into separate lookup tables
Let's say you have a CSV file that looks like this:
county,precinct,office,district,party,candidate,votes
Clark,1,President,,REP,John R. Kasich,5
Clark,2,President,,REP,John R. Kasich,0
Clark,3,President,,REP,John R. Kasich,7
You can now convert selected columns into separate lookup tables using the new --extract-column option (shortname: -c) - for example:
csvs-to-sqlite openelections-data-*/*.csv \
-c county:County:name \
-c precinct:Precinct:name \
-c office -c district -c party -c candidate \
openelections.db
The format is as follows:
column_name:optional_table_name:optional_table_value_column_name
If you just specify the column name e.g. -c office, the following table will be created:
CREATE TABLE "office" (
"id" INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
"value" TEXT
);
If you specify all three options, e.g. -c precinct:Precinct:name the table will look like this:
CREATE TABLE "Precinct" (
"id" INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
"name" TEXT
);
The original tables will be created like this:
CREATE TABLE "ca__primary__san_francisco__precinct" (
"county" INTEGER,
"precinct" INTEGER,
"office" INTEGER,
"district" INTEGER,
"party" INTEGER,
"candidate" INTEGER,
"votes" INTEGER,
FOREIGN KEY (county) REFERENCES County(id),
FOREIGN KEY (party) REFERENCES party(id),
FOREIGN KEY (precinct) REFERENCES Precinct(id),
FOREIGN KEY (office) REFERENCES office(id),
FOREIGN KEY (candidate) REFERENCES candidate(id)
);
They will be populated with IDs that reference the new derived tables.
Installation
$ pip install csvs-to-sqlite
csvs-to-sqlite now requires Python 3. If you are running Python 2 you can install the last version to support Python 2:
$ pip install csvs-to-sqlite==0.9.2
csvs-to-sqlite --help
Usage: csvs-to-sqlite [OPTIONS] PATHS... DBNAME
PATHS: paths to individual .csv files or to directories containing .csvs
DBNAME: name of the SQLite database file to create
Options:
-s, --separator TEXT Field separator in input .csv
-q, --quoting INTEGER Control field quoting behavior per csv.QUOTE_*
constants. Use one of QUOTE_MINIMAL (0),
QUOTE_ALL (1), QUOTE_NONNUMERIC (2) or
QUOTE_NONE (3).
--skip-errors Skip lines with too many fields instead of
stopping the import
--replace-tables Replace tables if they already exist
-t, --table TEXT Table to use (instead of using CSV filename)
-c, --extract-column TEXT One or more columns to 'extract' into a
separate lookup table. If you pass a simple
column name that column will be replaced with
integer foreign key references to a new table
of that name. You can customize the name of the
table like so:
state:States:state_name
This will pull unique values from the 'state'
column and use them to populate a new 'States'
table, with an id column primary key and a
state_name column containing the strings from
the original column.
-d, --date TEXT One or more columns to parse into ISO formatted
dates
-dt, --datetime TEXT One or more columns to parse into ISO formatted
datetimes
-df, --datetime-format TEXT One or more custom date format strings to try
when parsing dates/datetimes
-pk, --primary-key TEXT One or more columns to use as the primary key
-f, --fts TEXT One or more columns to use to populate a full-
text index
-i, --index TEXT Add index on this column (or a compound index
with -i col1,col2)
--shape TEXT Custom shape for the DB table - format is
csvcol:dbcol(TYPE),...
--filename-column TEXT Add a column with this name and populate with
CSV file name
--no-index-fks Skip adding index to foreign key columns
created using --extract-column (default is to
add them)
--no-fulltext-fks Skip adding full-text index on values extracted
using --extract-column (default is to add them)
--version Show the version and exit.
--help Show this message and exit.