How to handle null field when exporting MYSQL tables to CSV

Question

Right now when I export MYSQL tables to CSV files, I\'m getting \\N for NULL fields in the database which is expected. If there a way to change the \\N output to just an empty s

Answer 1

The hardway:-

SELECT 'CU_CustomerID','CU_UserName','CU_Password','CU_Email','CU_Company','CU_Comment','CU_LastBasket','CON_FirstName','CON_MiddleI','CON_LastName','CON_Address1','CON_Address2','CON_City','CON_State','CON_Province','CON_Country','CON_Zip','CON_Phone1','CON_Phone2'
UNION
SELECT COALESCE(T1.CU_CustomerID,''),COALESCE(T1.CU_UserName,''),COALESCE(T1.CU_Password,''),COALESCE(T1.CU_Email,''),COALESCE(T1.CU_Company,''),COALESCE(T1.CU_Comment,''),COALESCE(T1.CU_ShopperPoints,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_FirstName,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_MiddleI,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_LastName,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_Address1,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_Address2,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_City,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_State,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_Province,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_Country,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_Zip,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_Phone1,''),COALESCE(T2.CON_Phone2,'')
FROM CUSTOMERS AS T1
INNER JOIN CONTACT AS T2 ON T1.CU_CustomerID = T2.CON_CustomerID
WHERE T1.CU_CustomerID BETWEEN 0 AND 1000
INTO OUTFILE  'customers.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY  ','
ENCLOSED BY  '"'

This will default all values to an empty string rather than NULL ('\N').

Answer 2

Just in case. To avoid typing "ifnull(var,'') as var" for every single variable one can use this:

SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT("IFNULL(",COLUMN_NAME,",'') AS ", COLUMN_NAME))
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_NAME = '<table name>'
AND TABLE_SCHEMA = '<schema name>'
ORDER BY ORDINAL_POSITION

Answer 3

From MySQL documentation

If the FIELDS ESCAPED BY character is empty, no characters are escaped and NULL is output as NULL, not \N. It is probably not a good idea to specify an empty escape character, particularly if field values in your data contain any of the characters in the list just given.

Answer 4

I also had this problem, solved as follows:

select ifnull(addr.reference, "") AS reference, data2 from ...