export table to csv on postgres

Question

How can I export a table to .csv in Postgres, when I\'m not superuser and can\'t use the copy command?

I can still import the data to postgres

Answer 1

Besides what marvinorez's suggests in his answer you can do, from psql:

\copy your_table TO '/path/to/your/file.csv' DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER

On the other hand, from pgadmin3, you can also open the table by right clicking on it's name and then selecting View Data. Then you can click on the upper-left corner of the table (where the column name row joins with the row number column, a gray empty square) to select all rows. Finally, you can copy with CtrlC or Edit -> Copy in the menu. The data will be copied to the clipboard in csv format, delimited by semicolon ;. You can then paste it in LibreOffice Calc, MS Excel to display for instance.

If your table is large (what is large depends on the amount of RAM of your machine, among other things) it might not fit in the clipboard, so in that case, I would not use this method but the first one (\copy).

Answer 2

COPY your_table TO '/path/to/your/file.csv' DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER;

For more details go to this manual

Answer 3

I was having trouble with superuser and running psql, I took the simple stupid way using PGAdmin III.
1) SELECT * FROM ;
Before running select Query in the menu bar and select 'Query to File' This will save it to a folder of your choice. May have to play with the settings on how to export, it likes quoting and ;.

2) SELECT * FROM ;
run normally and then save the output by selecting export in the File menu. This will save as a .csv

This is not a good approach for large tables. Tables I have done this for are a few 100,000 rows and 10-30 columns. Large tables may have problems.

Answer 4

Use psql and redirect stream to file:

psql -U <USER> -d <DB_NAME> -c "COPY <YOUR_TABLE> TO stdout DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER;" > file.csv

Answer 5

The easiest way would indeed be a COPY to stdout I think. If you can't do this, how about using pg_dump and then transform the output file with sed, AWK or even a text editor? This should work even with search and replace in an acceptable amount of time :)