Run a PostgreSQL .sql file using command line arguments

Question

I have some .sql files with thousands of INSERT statements in them and need to run these inserts on my PostgreSQL database in order to add them to a table. The files are tha

Answer 1

You have four choices to supply a password:

1. Set the PGPASSWORD environment variable. For details see the manual:
   http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-envars.html
2. Use a .pgpass file to store the password. For details see the manual:
   http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-pgpass.html
3. Use "trust authentication" for that specific user: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/auth-methods.html#AUTH-TRUST
4. Since PostgreSQL 9.1 you can also use a connection string:
   https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-connect.html#LIBPQ-CONNSTRING

Answer 2

Walk through on how to run an SQL on the command line for PostgreSQL in Linux:

Open a terminal and make sure you can run the psql command:

psql --version
which psql

Mine is version 9.1.6 located in /bin/psql.

Create a plain textfile called mysqlfile.sql

Edit that file, put a single line in there:

select * from mytable;

Run this command on commandline (substituting your username and the name of your database for pgadmin and kurz_prod):

psql -U pgadmin -d kurz_prod -a -f mysqlfile.sql

The following is the result I get on the terminal (I am not prompted for a password):

select * from mytable;

test1
--------
hi
me too

(2 rows)

Answer 3

If you are logged in into psql on the Linux shell the command is:

\i fileName.sql

for an absolute path and

\ir filename.sql

for the relative path from where you have called psql.

Answer 4

you could even do it in this way:

sudo -u postgres psql -d myDataBase -a -f myInsertFile

If you have sudo access on machine and it's not recommended for production scripts just for test on your own machine it's the easiest way.

Answer 5

You can open a command prompt and run as administrator. Then type

../bin>psql -f c:/...-h localhost -p 5432 -d databasename -U "postgres"

Password for user postgres: will show up.

Type your password and enter. I couldn't see the password what I was typing, but this time when I press enter it worked. Actually I was loading data into the database.

Answer 6

Of course, you will get a fatal error for authenticating, because you do not include a user name...

Try this one, it is OK for me :)

psql -U username -d myDataBase -a -f myInsertFile

If the database is remote, use the same command with host

psql -h host -U username -d myDataBase -a -f myInsertFile