The latest articles on DEV Community by Kevin Ard (@therealkevinard). https://dev.to/therealkevinard https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F112933%2Fdfc41762-e5dd-490c-bf39-a1a58a8d524f.jpeg https://dev.to/therealkevinard en Kevin Ard Mon, 20 May 2019 14:41:56 +0000 https://dev.to/therealkevinard/today-i-learned-why-there-aren-t-many-tools-for-sql-ing-a-csv-37b https://dev.to/therealkevinard/today-i-learned-why-there-aren-t-many-tools-for-sql-ing-a-csv-37b <p>I wear a lot of hats, and I up using CSVs pretty frequently because it's such a common layperson data exchange format. I know a bit of SQL, and I've caught myself wondering a thousand times why there aren't many tools for running SQL against a spreadsheet. </p> <p>I was doing a little sysadmin today and caught myself wondering the same thing again. This time, though... I took a minute to wrap my head around it. </p> <p>And now I know: <strong>Sqlite</strong></p> <p>What I found was how dead. stinking. simple it is to translate a csv directly to a sqlite database. From there, I could go to town on it. </p> <ol> <li><p>Find a csv and tidy-up if needed. <em>(caveat: all your columns need a header - makes sense for a database, though, right?)</em></p></li> <li><p>Start sqlite: <code>sqlite3 some_db_file.db</code> </p></li> <li><p>Import the csv into a clean database<br> </p></li> </ol> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> .mode csv .import my_csv_file.csv some_db_name </code></pre> </div> <p><strong>Done!</strong> Sqlite automagically shuffled your spreadsheet into a new database. Run SQL against it, build a CLI app that consumes it, whatever - have fun! </p> sql sqlite productivity tutorial