ClickHouse/docs/en/sql-reference/table-functions/file.md

slug	sidebar_position	sidebar_label
/en/sql-reference/table-functions/file	37	file

file

Creates a table from a file. This table function is similar to url and hdfs ones.

file function can be used in SELECT and INSERT queries on data in File tables.

Syntax

file(path [,format] [,structure] [,compression])

Parameters

• path — The relative path to the file from user_files_path. Path to file support following globs in read-only mode: *, ?, {abc,def} and {N..M} where N, M — numbers, 'abc', 'def' — strings.
• format — The format of the file.
• structure — Structure of the table. Format: 'column1_name column1_type, column2_name column2_type, ...'.
• compression — The existing compression type when used in a SELECT query, or the desired compression type when used in an INSERT query. The supported compression types are gz, br, xz, zst, lz4, and bz2.

Returned value

A table with the specified structure for reading or writing data in the specified file.

Examples

Setting user_files_path and the contents of the file test.csv:

$ grep user_files_path /etc/clickhouse-server/config.xml
    <user_files_path>/var/lib/clickhouse/user_files/</user_files_path>

$ cat /var/lib/clickhouse/user_files/test.csv
    1,2,3
    3,2,1
    78,43,45

Getting data from a table in test.csv and selecting the first two rows from it:

SELECT * FROM file('test.csv', 'CSV', 'column1 UInt32, column2 UInt32, column3 UInt32') LIMIT 2;

┌─column1─┬─column2─┬─column3─┐
│       1 │       2 │       3 │
│       3 │       2 │       1 │
└─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘

Getting the first 10 lines of a table that contains 3 columns of UInt32 type from a CSV file:

SELECT * FROM file('test.csv', 'CSV', 'column1 UInt32, column2 UInt32, column3 UInt32') LIMIT 10;

Inserting data from a file into a table:

INSERT INTO FUNCTION file('test.csv', 'CSV', 'column1 UInt32, column2 UInt32, column3 UInt32') VALUES (1, 2, 3), (3, 2, 1);
SELECT * FROM file('test.csv', 'CSV', 'column1 UInt32, column2 UInt32, column3 UInt32');

┌─column1─┬─column2─┬─column3─┐
│       1 │       2 │       3 │
│       3 │       2 │       1 │
└─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘

Globs in Path

Multiple path components can have globs. For being processed file must exist and match to the whole path pattern (not only suffix or prefix).

• * — Substitutes any number of any characters except / including empty string.
• ? — Substitutes any single character.
• {some_string,another_string,yet_another_one} — Substitutes any of strings 'some_string', 'another_string', 'yet_another_one'.
• {N..M} — Substitutes any number in range from N to M including both borders.
• ** - Fetches all files inside the folder recursively.

Constructions with {} are similar to the remote table function.

Example

Suppose we have several files with the following relative paths:

• 'some_dir/some_file_1'
• 'some_dir/some_file_2'
• 'some_dir/some_file_3'
• 'another_dir/some_file_1'
• 'another_dir/some_file_2'
• 'another_dir/some_file_3'

Query the number of rows in these files:

SELECT count(*) FROM file('{some,another}_dir/some_file_{1..3}', 'TSV', 'name String, value UInt32');

Query the number of rows in all files of these two directories:

SELECT count(*) FROM file('{some,another}_dir/*', 'TSV', 'name String, value UInt32');

:::note
If your listing of files contains number ranges with leading zeros, use the construction with braces for each digit separately or use ?. :::

Example

Query the data from files named file000, file001, … , file999:

SELECT count(*) FROM file('big_dir/file{0..9}{0..9}{0..9}', 'CSV', 'name String, value UInt32');

Example

Query the data from all files inside big_dir directory recursively:

SELECT count(*) FROM file('big_dir/**', 'CSV', 'name String, value UInt32');

Example

Query the data from all file002 files from any folder inside big_dir directory recursively:

SELECT count(*) FROM file('big_dir/**/file002', 'CSV', 'name String, value UInt32');

Virtual Columns

• _path — Path to the file.
• _file — Name of the file.

See Also

• Virtual columns