Can I automatically create a table in PostgreSQL from a csv file with headers?

Question

I'm running PostgreSQL 9.2.6 on OS X 10.6.8. I would like to import data from a CSV file with column headers into a database. I can do this with the COPY statement, but only if I first manually create a table with a column for each column in the CSV file. Is there any way to automatically create this table based on the headers in the CSV file?

Per this question I have tried

COPY test FROM '/path/to/test.csv' CSV HEADER;

But I just get this error:

ERROR: relation "test" does not exist

And if I first create a table with no columns:

CREATE TABLE test ();

I get:

ERROR: extra data after last expected column

I can't find anything in the PostgreSQL COPY documentation about automatically creating a table. Is there some other way to automatically create a table from a CSV file with headers?

Answer 1

There is a very good tool that imports tables into Postgres from a csv file. It is a command-line tool called pgfutter (with binaries for windows, linux, etc.). One of its big advantages is that it recognizes the attribute/column names as well.

The usage of the tool is simple. For example if you'd like to import myCSVfile.csv:

pgfutter --db "myDatabase" --port "5432" --user "postgres" --pw "mySecretPassword" csv myCSVfile.csv

This will create a table (called myCSVfile) with the column names taken from the csv file's header. Additionally the data types will be identified from the existing data.

A few notes: The command pgfutter varies depending on the binary you use, e.g. it could be pgfutter_windows_amd64.exe (rename it if you intend to use this command frequently). The above command has to be executed in a command line window (e.g. in Windows run cmd and ensure pgfutter is accessible). If you'd like to have a different table name add --table "myTable"; to select a particular database schema us --schema "mySchema". In case you are accessing an external database use --host "myHostDomain".

A more elaborate example of pgfutter to import myFile into myTable is this one:

pgfutter --host "localhost" --port "5432" --db "myDB" --schema "public" --table "myTable" --user "postgres" --pw "myPwd" csv myFile.csv

Most likely you will change a few data types (from text to numeric) after the import:

alter table myTable
  alter column myColumn type numeric
    using (trim(myColumn)::numeric)