ClickHouse/docs/en/operations/table_engines/file.md
Ivan Blinkov 16ca492938
WIP on docs (#3813)
* CLICKHOUSE-4063: less manual html @ index.md

* CLICKHOUSE-4063: recommend markdown="1" in README.md

* CLICKHOUSE-4003: manually purge custom.css for now

* CLICKHOUSE-4064: expand <details> before any print (including to pdf)

* CLICKHOUSE-3927: rearrange interfaces/formats.md a bit

* CLICKHOUSE-3306: add few http headers

* Remove copy-paste introduced in #3392

* Hopefully better chinese fonts #3392

* get rid of tabs @ custom.css

* Apply comments and patch from #3384

* Add jdbc.md to ToC and some translation, though it still looks badly incomplete

* minor punctuation

* Add some backlinks to official website from mirrors that just blindly take markdown sources

* Do not make fonts extra light

* find . -name '*.md' -type f | xargs -I{} perl -pi -e 's//g' {}

* find . -name '*.md' -type f | xargs -I{} perl -pi -e 's/ sql/g' {}

* Remove outdated stuff from roadmap.md

* Not so light font on front page too

* Refactor Chinese formats.md to match recent changes in other languages

* Update some links on front page

* Remove some outdated comment

* Add twitter link to front page

* More front page links tuning

* Add Amsterdam meetup link

* Smaller font to avoid second line

* Add Amsterdam link to README.md

* Proper docs nav translation

* Back to 300 font-weight except Chinese

* fix docs build

* Update Amsterdam link

* remove symlinks

* more zh punctuation

* apply lost comment by @zhang2014

* Apply comments by @zhang2014 from #3417

* Remove Beijing link

* rm incorrect symlink

* restore content of docs/zh/operations/table_engines/index.md

* CLICKHOUSE-3751: stem terms while searching docs

* CLICKHOUSE-3751: use English stemmer in non-English docs too

* CLICKHOUSE-4135 fix

* Remove past meetup link

* Add blog link to top nav

* Add ContentSquare article link

* Add form link to front page + refactor some texts

* couple markup fixes

* minor

* Introduce basic ODBC driver page in docs

* More verbose 3rd party libs disclaimer

* Put third-party stuff into a separate folder

* Separate third-party stuff in ToC too

* Update links

* Move stuff that is not really (only) a client library into a separate page

* Add clickhouse-hdfs-loader link

* Some introduction for "interfaces" section

* Rewrite tcp.md

* http_interface.md -> http.md

* fix link

* Remove unconvenient error for now

* try to guess anchor instead of failing

* remove symlink

* Remove outdated info from introduction

* remove ru roadmap.md

* replace ru roadmap.md with symlink

* Update roadmap.md

* lost file

* Title case in toc_en.yml

* Sync "Functions" ToC section with en

* Remove reference to pretty old ClickHouse release from docs

* couple lost symlinks in fa

* Close quote in proper place

* Rewrite en/getting_started/index.md

* Sync en<>ru getting_started/index.md

* minor changes

* Some gui.md refactoring

* Translate DataGrip section to ru

* Translate DataGrip section to zh

* Translate DataGrip section to fa

* Translate DBeaver section to fa

* Translate DBeaver section to zh

* Split third-party GUI to open-source and commercial

* Mention some RDBMS integrations + ad-hoc translation fixes

* Add rel="external nofollow" to outgoing links from docs

* Lost blank lines

* Fix class name

* More rel="external nofollow"

* Apply suggestions by @sundy-li

* Mobile version of front page improvements

* test

* test 2

* test 3

* Update LICENSE

* minor docs fix

* Highlight current article as suggested by @sundy-li

* fix link destination

* Introduce backup.md (only "en" for now)

* Mention INSERT+SELECT in backup.md

* Some improvements for replication.md

* Add backup.md to toc

* Mention clickhouse-backup tool

* Mention LightHouse in third-party GUI list

* Introduce interfaces/third-party/proxy.md

* Add clickhouse-bulk to proxy.md

* Major extension of integrations.md contents

* fix link target

* remove unneeded file

* better toc item name

* fix markdown

* better ru punctuation

* Add yet another possible backup approach

* Simplify copying permalinks to headers

* Support non-eng link anchors in docs + update some deps

* Generate anchors for single-page mode automatically

* Remove anchors to top of pages

* Remove anchors that nobody links to

* build fixes

* fix few links

* restore css

* fix some links

* restore gifs

* fix lost words

* more docs fixes

* docs fixes

* NULL anchor

* update urllib3 dependency

* more fixes
2018-12-12 20:28:00 +03:00

2.5 KiB

File(InputFormat)

The data source is a file that stores data in one of the supported input formats (TabSeparated, Native, etc.).

Usage examples:

  • Data export from ClickHouse to file.
  • Convert data from one format to another.
  • Updating data in ClickHouse via editing a file on a disk.

Usage in ClickHouse Server

File(Format)

Format should be supported for either INSERT and SELECT. For the full list of supported formats see Formats.

ClickHouse does not allow to specify filesystem path forFile. It will use folder defined by path setting in server configuration.

When creating table using File(Format) it creates empty subdirectory in that folder. When data is written to that table, it's put into data.Format file in that subdirectory.

You may manually create this subfolder and file in server filesystem and then ATTACH it to table information with matching name, so you can query data from that file.

!!! warning Be careful with this funcionality, because ClickHouse does not keep track of external changes to such files. The result of simultaneous writes via ClickHouse and outside of ClickHouse is undefined.

Example:

1. Set up the file_engine_table table:

CREATE TABLE file_engine_table (name String, value UInt32) ENGINE=File(TabSeparated)

By default ClickHouse will create folder /var/lib/clickhouse/data/default/file_engine_table.

2. Manually create /var/lib/clickhouse/data/default/file_engine_table/data.TabSeparated containing:

$ cat data.TabSeparated
one	1
two	2

3. Query the data:

SELECT * FROM file_engine_table
┌─name─┬─value─┐
│ one  │     1 │
│ two  │     2 │
└──────┴───────┘

Usage in Clickhouse-local

In clickhouse-local File engine accepts file path in addition to Format. Default input/output streams can be specified using numeric or human-readable names like 0 or stdin, 1 or stdout. Example:

$ echo -e "1,2\n3,4" | clickhouse-local -q "CREATE TABLE table (a Int64, b Int64) ENGINE = File(CSV, stdin); SELECT a, b FROM table; DROP TABLE table"

Details of Implementation

  • Reads can be parallel, but not writes
  • Not supported:
    • ALTER
    • SELECT ... SAMPLE
    • Indices
    • Replication

Original article