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I need to import data from a csv file to a postgresql table with python efficiently and in batches

I'm looking for an efficient way to import data from a CSV file to a Postgresql table using python in batches as I have quite large files and the server I'm importing the data to is far away. I need an efficient solution as everything I tried was either slow or just didn't work. I'm using SQLlahcemy.
I wanted to use raw SQL but it's so hard to parameterize and I need multiple loops to execute the query for multiple rows

I was given the task of manipulating & migrating some data from CSV files into a remote Postgres Instance.
I decided to use the Python script below:
import csv
import uuid
import psycopg2
import psycopg2.extras
import time
#Instant Time at the start of the Script
start = time.time()
psycopg2.extras.register_uuid()
#List of CSV Files that I want to manipulate & migrate.
file_list=["Address.csv"]
conn = psycopg2.connect("host=localhost dbname=address user=postgres password=docker")
cur = conn.cursor()
i = 1
for f in file_list:
f = open(f)
csv_f = csv.reader(f)
next(csv_f)
for row in csv_f:
# Some simple manipulations on each row
#Inserting a uuid4 into the first column
row.pop(0)
row.insert(0,uuid.uuid4())
row.pop(10)
row.insert(10,False)
row.pop(13)
#Tracking the number of rows inserted
print(i)
i = i + 1
#INSERT QUERY
postgres_insert_query = """ INSERT INTO "public"."address"("address_id","address_line_1","locality_area_street","address_name","app_version","channel_type","city","country","created_at","first_name","is_default","landmark","last_name","mobile","pincode","territory","updated_at","user_id") VALUES (%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s)"""
record_to_insert = row
cur.execute(postgres_insert_query,record_to_insert)
f.close()
conn.commit()
conn.close()
print(time.time()-start)
The script worked quite well and promptly when testing it locally. But connecting to a remote Database Server added a lot more latency.
As a workaround, I migrated the manipulated data into my local postgres instance.
I then generated a .sql file of the migrated data & manually imported the .sql file on the remote server.
Alternatively, you can also use Python's Multithreading features, to launch multiple concurrent connections to the remote server and dedicate an isolated batch process to each connection, and flush the data.
This should make your migration considerably faster.
I have personally not tried the multi threading approach as it wasn't required in my case. But it seems darn efficient.
Hope this helped ! :)
Resources:
CSV Manipulation using Python for Beginners.

use copy_from command, it copies all the rows to table.
path=open('file.csv','r')
next(path)
cur.copy_from(path,'table_name',columns=('id','name','email'))

Improving database query speed with Python

Edit - I am using Windows 10
Is there a faster alternative to pd._read_sql_query for a MS SQL database?
I was using pandas to read the data and add some columns and calculations on the data. I have cut out most of the alterations now and I am basically just reading (1-2 million rows per day at a time; my query is to read all of the data from the previous date) the data and saving it to a local database (Postgres).
The server I am connecting to is across the world and I have no privileges at all other than to query for the data. I want the solution to remain in Python if possible. I'd like to speed it up though and remove any overhead. Also, you can see that I am writing a file to disk temporarily and then opening it to COPY FROM STDIN. Is there a way to skip the file creation? It is sometimes over 500mb which seems like a waste.
engine = create_engine(engine_name)
query = 'SELECT * FROM {} WHERE row_date = %s;'
df = pd.read_sql_query(query.format(table_name), engine, params={query_date})
df.to_csv('../raw/temp_table.csv', index=False)
df= open('../raw/temp_table.csv')
process_file(conn=pg_engine, table_name=table_name, file_object=df)

UPDATE:
you can also try to unload data using bcp utility, which might be lot faster compared to pd.read_sql(), but you will need a local installation of Microsoft Command Line Utilities for SQL Server
After that you can use PostgreSQL's COPY ... FROM ......
OLD answer:
you can try to write your DF directly to PostgreSQL (skipping the df.to_csv(...) and df= open('../raw/temp_table.csv') parts):
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
engine = create_engine(engine_name)
query = 'SELECT * FROM {} WHERE row_date = %s;'
df = pd.read_sql_query(query.format(table_name), engine, params={query_date})
pg_engine = create_engine('postgresql+psycopg2://user:password#host:port/dbname')
df.to_sql(table_name, pg_engine, if_exists='append')
Just test whether it's faster compared to COPY FROM STDIN...

Optimizing a code to populate database using python (Django)

I'm trying to populate a SQLite database using Django with data from a file that consists of 6 million records. However the code that I've written is giving me a lot of time issues even with 50000 records.
This is the code with which I'm trying to populate the database:
import os
def populate():
with open("filename") as f:
for line in f:
col = line.strip().split("|")
duns=col[1]
name=col[8]
job=col[12]
dun_add = add_c_duns(duns)
add_contact(c_duns = dun_add, fn=name, job=job)
def add_contact(c_duns, fn, job):
c = Contact.objects.get_or_create(duns=c_duns, fullName=fn, title=job)
return c
def add_c_duns(duns):
cd = Contact_DUNS.objects.get_or_create(duns=duns)[0]
return cd
if __name__ == '__main__':
print "Populating Contact db...."
os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "settings")
from web.models import Contact, Contact_DUNS
populate()
print "Done!!"
The code works fine since I have tested this with dummy records, and it gives the desired results. I would like to know if there is a way using which I can lower the execution time of this code. Thanks.

I don't have enough reputation to comment, but here's a speculative answer.
Basically the only way to do this through django's ORM is to use bulk_create . So the first thing to consider is the use of get_or_create. If your database has existing records that might have duplicates in the input file, then your only choice is writing the SQL yourself. If you use it to avoid duplicates inside the input file, then preprocess it to remove duplicate rows.
So if you can live without the get part of get_or_create, then you can follow this strategy:
Go through each row of the input file and instantiate a Contact_DUNS instance for each entry (don't actually create the rows, just write Contact_DUNS(duns=duns) ) and save all instances to an array. Pass the array to bulk_create to actually create the rows.
Generate a list of DUNS-id pairs with value_list and convert them to a dict with the DUNS number as the key and the row id as the value.
Repeat step 1 but with Contact instances. Before creating each instance use the DUNS number to get the Contact_DUNS id from the dictionary of step 2. The instantiate each Contact in the following way: Contact(duns_id=c_duns_id, fullName=fn, title=job). Again, after collecting the Contact instances just pass them to bulk_create to create the rows.
This should radically improve performance as you'll be no longer executing a query for each input line. But as I said above, this can only work if you can be certain that there are no duplicates in the database or the input file.
EDIT Here's the code:
import os
def populate_duns():
# Will only work if there are no DUNS duplicates
# (both in the DB and within the file)
duns_instances = []
with open("filename") as f:
for line in f:
duns = line.strip().split("|")[1]
duns_instances.append(Contact_DUNS(duns=duns))
# Run a single INSERT query for all DUNS instances
# (actually it will be run in batches run but it's still quite fast)
Contact_DUNS.objects.bulk_create(duns_instances)
def get_duns_dict():
# This is basically a SELECT query for these two fields
duns_id_pairs = Contact_DUNS.objects.values_list('duns', 'id')
return dict(duns_id_pairs)
def populate_contacts():
# Repeat the same process for Contacts
contact_instances = []
duns_dict = get_duns_dict()
with open("filename") as f:
for line in f:
col = line.strip().split("|")
duns = col[1]
name = col[8]
job = col[12]
ci = Contact(duns_id=duns_dict[duns],
fullName=name,
title=job)
contact_instances.append(ci)
# Again, run only a single INSERT query
Contact.objects.bulk_create(contact_instances)
if __name__ == '__main__':
print "Populating Contact db...."
os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "settings")
from web.models import Contact, Contact_DUNS
populate_duns()
populate_contacts()
print "Done!!"

CSV Import
First of all 6 million records is a quite a lot for sqllite and worse still sqlite isn't very good and importing CSV data directly.
There is no standard as to what a CSV file should look like, and the
SQLite shell does not even attempt to handle all the intricacies of
interpreting a CSV file. If you need to import a complex CSV file and
the SQLite shell doesn't handle it, you may want to try a different
front end, such as SQLite Database Browser.
On the other hand Mysql and Postgresql are more capable of handling CSV data and mysql's LOAD DATA IN FILE and Postgresql COPY are both painless ways to import very large amounts of data in a very short period of time.
Suitability of Sqlite.
You are using django => you are building a web app => more than one user will access the database. This is from the manual about concurrency.
SQLite supports an unlimited number of simultaneous readers, but it
will only allow one writer at any instant in time. For many
situations, this is not a problem. Writer queue up. Each application
does its database work quickly and moves on, and no lock lasts for
more than a few dozen milliseconds. But there are some applications
that require more concurrency, and those applications may need to seek
a different solution.
Even your read operations are likely to be rather slow because an sqlite database is just one single file. So with this amount of data there will be a lot of seek operations involved. The data cannot be spread across multiple files or even disks as is possible with proper client server databases.
The good news for you is that with Django you can usually switch from Sqlite to Mysql to Postgresql just by changing your settings.py. No other changes are needed. (The reverse isn't always true)
So I urge you to consider switching to mysql or postgresl before you get in too deep. It will help you solve your present problem and also help to avoid problems that you will run into sooner or later.

6,000,000 is quite a lot to import via Python. If Python is not a hard requirement, you could write a SQLite script that directly import the CSV data and create your tables using SQL statements. Even faster would be to preprocess your file using awk and output two CSV files corresponding to your two tables.
I used to import 20,000,000 records using sqlite3 CSV importer and it took only a few minutes minutes.

Reading sas7bdat files with Python's adodbapi

I'm trying to read a sas7bdat file from SAS (product of the SAS Institute) into Python.
Yes, I'm a aware that we could export to *.csv files, but I'm trying to avoid that as that will double the number of files we need to create.
There's good documentation for doing this in Visual Basic. Still, I want it in Python. For example, in VB you could write...
Dim cn as ADODB.Connection
Dim rs as ADODB.Recordset
obConnection.Provider = "sas.LocalProvider"
obConnection.Properties("Data Source") = "c:\MySasData"
obConnection.Open
rs.Open "work.a", cn, adOpenStatic, adLockReadOnly, adCmdTableDirect
To open your dataset.
But I can't crack the nut to make this work in python.
I can type...
import adodbapi
cnstr = 'Provider=sas.LocalProvider;c:\\MySasData'
cn = adodbap.connect(cnstr)
And a can get a cursor...
cur = cn.cur()
But beyond that, I'm stumped. I did find a cur.rs, which sounds like a recordset, but it is an object with a type of None.
Also, to preempt some alternative methods...
I do not want to create *.csv files in SAS.
The computer with Python does not have SAS installed, but does have the Providers for OLE DB installed. I know for a fact that the VB code I provided works without SAS in read-only mode. You can download these drivers here: http://support.sas.com/downloads/browse.htm?cat=64
I am not expert in SAS. Honestly, I find their tool cumbersome, confusingly documented, and slow. I noticed that there are some other products listed called "IOMProvider" and "SAS/SHARE". If there's an easier way of doing this using those ADO providers, feel free to document it. However, what I'm really looking for is a way of doing this entirely within Python with a relatively simple bit of code.
Oh, and I'm aware of Python's sas7bdat package, but we're using Python 3.3.5 and it doesn't seem to be compatible. Also, I couldn't figure out how to use it on 2.7 anyways as there's not a lot of documentation and even a question on how to use the tool, which, to this day, is unanswered. Python sas7bdat module usage
Thanks!

Didn't test it with SAS as I don't have a provider installed currently, it should go like this:
cn = adodbapi.connect(cnstr)
# print table names in current db
for table in cn.get_table_names():
print(table)
with cn.cursor() as c:
#run an SQL statement on the cursor
sql = 'select * from your_table'
c.execute(sql)
#get the results
db = c.fetchmany(5)
#print them
for rec in db:
print(rec)
cn.close()
EDIT:
Just found this http://support.sas.com/kb/30/795.html so you might need to use other provider for this method, have a look at IOM privoder (https://www.connectionstrings.com/sas-iom-provider/ , http://support.sas.com/documentation/tools/oledb/gs_iom_tasks.htm)

Reading DBF files with pyodbc

In a project, I need to extract data from a Visual FoxPro database, which is stored in dbf files, y have a data directory with 539 files I need to take into account, each file represents a database table, so I've been doing some testing and my code goes like this:
import pyodbc
connection = pyodbc.connect("Driver={Microsoft Visual FoxPro Driver};SourceType=DBF;SourceDB=P:\\Data;Exclusive=No;Collate=Machine;NULL=No;DELETED=Yes")
tables = connection.cursor().tables()
for _ in tables:
print _
this prints only 15 tables, with no obvious pattern, always the same 15 tables, I thought this was because the rest of the tables were empty but I checked and it some of the tables (dbf files) on the list are empty too, then, I thought it was a permission issue, but all the files have the same permission structure, so, I don't know what's happening here.
Any light??
EDIT:
It is not truccating the output, the tables it list are not the 15 first or anything like that

I DID IT!!!!
There where several problems with what I was doing so, here I come with what I did to solve it (after implementing it the first time with Ethan Furman's solution)
The first thing was a driver problem, it turns out that the Windows' DBF drivers are 32 bits programs and runs on a 64 bits operating system, so, I had installed Python-amd64 and that was the first problem, so I installed a 32bit Python.
The second issue was a library/file issue, according to this, dbf files in VFP > 7 are diferent, so my pyodbc library won't read them correctly, so I tried some OLE-DB libraries with no success and I decided to to it from scratch.
Googling for a while took me to this post which finally gave me a light on this
Basically, what I did was the following:
import win32com.client
conn = win32com.client.Dispatch('ADODB.Connection')
db = 'C:\\Profit\\profit_a\\ARMM'
dsn = 'Provider=VFPOLEDB.1;Data Source=%s' % db
conn.Open(dsn)
cmd = win32com.client.Dispatch('ADODB.Command')
cmd.ActiveConnection = conn
cmd.CommandText = "Select * from factura, reng_fac where factura.fact_num = reng_fac.fact_num AND factura.fact_num = 6099;"
rs, total = cmd.Execute() # This returns a tuple: (<RecordSet>, number_of_records)
while total:
for x in xrange(rs.Fields.Count):
print '%s --> %s' % (rs.Fields.item(x).Name, rs.Fields.item(x).Value)
rs.MoveNext() #<- Extra indent
total = total - 1
And it gave me 20 records which I checked with DBFCommander and were OK
First, you need to install pywin32 extensions (32bits) and the Visual FoxPro OLE-DB Provider (only available for 32bits), in my case for VFP 9.0
Also, it's good to read de ADO Documentation at the w3c website
This worked for me. Thank you very much to those who replied

I would use my own dbf package and the code would go something like this:
import dbf
from glob import glob
for dbf_file in glob(r'p:\data\*.dbf'):
with dbf.Table(dbf_file) as table:
for record in table:
do_something_with(record)
A table is list-like, and iteration through it returns records. A record is list-, dict-, and obj-like, and iteration returns the values; besides iteration through the record, individual fields can be accessed either by offset (record[0] for the first field), by field-name using dict-like access (record['some_field']), or by field-name using obj.attr-like access (record.some_field).
If you just wanted to dump the contents of each dbf file into a csv file you could do:
for dbf_file in glob(r'p:\data\*.dbf'):
with dbf.Table(dbf_file) as table:
dbf.export(table, dbf_file)

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but might still help. I've had lots of issues using ODBC with VFP databases and I've found it's often much easier treating the VFP tables as free tables when possible.
Using Yusdi Santoso's dbf.py and glob, here's some code to open each table in a directory and run through each record.
import glob
import os
import dbf
os.chdir("P:\\data")
for file in glob.glob("*.dbf"):
table = dbf.readDbf(file)
for row in table:
#do stuff