SQLite Forum

Feature request: Import csv into a table with generated columns
Login
Ah, thanks; I hadn't quite stopped to think about the difference between information available to the shell and what the core library can discover so easily. Still, however, I don't think the docs explains (to my level of understanding) what happened. I think it all depends what mechanism the shell is using to communicate the tuples to the database layer and telling it what to do with it. As I haven't studied the source, and am not at all familiar with the C API, I really can't know.

Unfortunately, my csv files come from spreadsheets not of my making, so the column headers won't match. But your response (and the other followup) got a handful of my brain cells working again, so I found a better way, demonstrated here with my toy example.

I start `sqlite3` with no argument, thus working at first with the in-memory database, then:

```
▶▶▶ .shell cat n.csv
"fee fie foe foo",bar
1,2
3,4
▶▶▶ .import -csv n.csv tmpn
▶▶▶ attach 'n.db' as n;
▶▶▶ .schema n
CREATE TABLE n.n(a,b,c as (a+b) stored);
▶▶▶ insert into n.n select * from tmpn;
▶▶▶ select * from n;
a  b  c
-  -  -
1  2  3
3  4  7
```

This seems to me the easiest approach, as the critical parts (`.import`, `attach`, `insert`) are the same no matter the particulars of the database schema and the details of the csv file, so long as the number of columns matches.