Populating Auto-Increment Fields with LOAD DATA INFILE in MySQL

When working with an existing table where the ID column is an auto-increment field, importing data through LOAD DATA INFILE can pose a challenge. This article provides an efficient solution to handle such scenarios.

For clarity, consider the following table structure:

---------------------
ID | AField | BField|
---------------------

where ID is an auto-increment field.

To create a CSV file that enables the database to auto-populate the ID field with auto-increment numbers, the ideal approach is to include only the non-auto-increment columns in the CSV. Subsequently, explicitly set the ID column to NULL in the LOAD DATA INFILE statement.

This approach ensures that the database generates the auto-increment numbers for the ID field during the import process. For example, consider the following CSV:

afieldvalue, bfieldvalue

The LOAD DATA INFILE statement would look like this:

LOAD DATA INFILE '/tmp/data.csv'
INTO TABLE your_table
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
(AField, BField)
SET ID = NULL;

By following this approach, you can seamlessly populate the auto-increment ID field when importing data through LOAD DATA INFILE in MySQL.