COPY INTO

Applies to: Databricks SQL Databricks Runtime

Loads data from a file location into a Delta table. This is a retryable and idempotent operation — Files in the source location that have already been loaded are skipped. This is true even if the files have been modified since they were loaded. For examples, see Common data loading patterns using COPY INTO.

Syntax

COPY INTO target_table [ BY POSITION | ( col_name [ , <col_name> ... ] ) ]
  FROM { source_clause |
         ( SELECT expression_list FROM source_clause ) }
  FILEFORMAT = data_source
  [ VALIDATE [ ALL | num_rows ROWS ] ]
  [ FILES = ( file_name [, ...] ) | PATTERN = glob_pattern ]
  [ FORMAT_OPTIONS ( { data_source_reader_option = value } [, ...] ) ]
  [ COPY_OPTIONS ( { copy_option = value } [, ...] ) ]

source_clause
  source [ WITH ( [ CREDENTIAL { credential_name |
                                 (temporary_credential_options) } ]
                  [ ENCRYPTION (encryption_options) ] ) ]

Parameters

• target_table

  Identifies an existing Delta table. The target_table must not include a temporal specification.

• BY POSITION | ( col_name [ , <col_name> … ] )

  Matches source columns to target table columns by ordinal position. Type casting of the matched columns is done automatically.

  This parameter is only supported for headerless CSV file format. You must specify FILEFORMAT = CSV. FORMAT_OPTIONS must also be set to ("headers" = "false") (FORMAT_OPTIONS ("headers" = "false") is the default).

  Syntax option 1: BY POSITION

  • Matches source columns to target table columns by ordinal position automatically.

    • The default name matching is not used for matching.

    • IDENTITY columns and GENERATED columns of the target table are ignored when matching the source columns.

    • If the number of source columns doesn’t equal the filtered target table columns, COPY INTO raises an error.

  Syntax option 2: ( col_name [ , <col_name> ... ] )

  • Matches source columns to the specified target table columns by relative ordinal position using a target table column name list in parentheses, separated by comma.

    • The original table column order and column names are not used for matching.

    • IDENTITY columns and GENERATED columns cannot be specified in the column name list, otherwise COPY INTO raises an error.

    • The specified columns cannot be duplicated.

    • When the number of source columns doesn’t equal the specified table columns, COPY INTO raises an error.

    • For the columns that are not specified in the column name list, COPY INTO assigns default values, if any, and assigns NULL otherwise. If any column is not nullable, COPY INTO raises an error.

• source

  The file location to load the data from. Files in this location must have the format specified in FILEFORMAT. The location is provided in the form of a URI.

  Access to the source location can be provided through:

  • credential_name

    Optional name of the credential used to access or write to the storage location. You use this credential only if the file location is not included in an external location. See credential_name.

  • Inline temporary credentials.

  Note

  If the source file path is a root path, please add a slash (/) at the end of the file path, for example, s3://my-bucket/.

  Accepted credential options are:

  • AWS_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SECRET_KEY, and AWS_SESSION_TOKEN for AWS S3

  • AZURE_SAS_TOKEN for ADLS Gen2 and Azure Blob Storage

  Accepted encryption options are:

  • TYPE = 'AWS_SSE_C', and MASTER_KEY for AWS S3

• SELECT expression_list

  Selects the specified columns or expressions from the source data before copying into the Delta table. The expressions can be anything you use with SELECT statements, including window operations. You can use aggregation expressions only for global aggregates–you cannot GROUP BY on columns with this syntax.

• FILEFORMAT = data_source

  The format of the source files to load. One of CSV, JSON, AVRO, ORC, PARQUET, TEXT, BINARYFILE.

• VALIDATE

  Applies to: Databricks SQL Databricks Runtime 10.4 LTS and above

  The data that is to be loaded into a table is validated but not written to the table. These validations include:

  • Whether the data can be parsed.

  • Whether the schema matches that of the table or if the schema needs to be evolved.

  • Whether all nullability and check constraints are met.

  The default is to validate all of the data that is to be loaded. You can provide a number of rows to be validated with the ROWS keyword, such as VALIDATE 15 ROWS. The COPY INTO statement returns a preview of the data of 50 rows or less when a number of less than 50 is used with the ROWS keyword).

• FILES

  A list of file names to load, with a limit of 1000 files. Cannot be specified with PATTERN.

• PATTERN

  A glob pattern that identifies the files to load from the source directory. Cannot be specified with FILES.

  Pattern	Description
  ?	Matches any single character
  *	Matches zero or more characters
  [abc]	Matches a single character from character set {a,b,c}.
  [a-z]	Matches a single character from the character range {a…z}.
  [^a]	Matches a single character that is not from character set or range {a}. Note that the ^ character must occur immediately to the right of the opening bracket.
  {ab,cd}	Matches a string from the string set {ab, cd}.
  {ab,c{de, fh}}	Matches a string from the string set {ab, cde, cfh}.

• FORMAT_OPTIONS

  Options to be passed to the Apache Spark data source reader for the specified format. See Format options for each file format.

• COPY_OPTIONS

  Options to control the operation of the COPY INTO command.

  • force: boolean, default false. If set to true, idempotency is disabled and files are loaded regardless of whether they’ve been loaded before.

  • mergeSchema: boolean, default false. If set to true, the schema can be evolved according to the incoming data.

Invoke COPY INTO concurrently

COPY INTO supports concurrent invocations against the same table. As long as COPY INTO is invoked concurrently on distinct sets of input files, each invocation should eventually succeed, otherwise you get a transaction conflict. COPY INTO should not be invoked concurrently to improve performance; a single COPY INTO command with multiple files typically performs better than running concurrent COPY INTO commands with a single file each. COPY INTO can be called concurrently when:

• Multiple data producers don’t have an easy way to coordinate and cannot make a single invocation.

• When a very large directory can be ingested sub-directory by sub-directory. When ingesting directories with a very large number of files, Databricks recommends using Auto Loader when possible.

Access file metadata

To learn how to access metadata for file-based data sources, see File metadata column.

Format options

Generic options

The following options apply to all file formats.

Option
ignoreCorruptFiles Type: Boolean Whether to ignore corrupt files. If true, the Spark jobs will continue to run when encountering corrupted files and the contents that have been read will still be returned. Observable as numSkippedCorruptFiles in the operationMetrics column of the Delta Lake history. Available in Databricks Runtime 11.3 LTS and above. Default value: false
ignoreMissingFiles Type: Boolean Whether to ignore missing files. If true, the Spark jobs will continue to run when encountering missing files and the contents that have been read will still be returned. Available in Databricks Runtime 11.3 LTS and above. Default value: false (true for COPY INTO)
modifiedAfter Type: Timestamp String, for example, 2021-01-01 00:00:00.000000 UTC+0 An optional timestamp to ingest files that have a modification timestamp after the provided timestamp. Default value: None
modifiedBefore Type: Timestamp String, for example, 2021-01-01 00:00:00.000000 UTC+0 An optional timestamp to ingest files that have a modification timestamp before the provided timestamp. Default value: None
pathGlobFilter or fileNamePattern Type: String A potential glob pattern to provide for choosing files. Equivalent to PATTERN in COPY INTO. fileNamePattern can be used in read_files. Default value: None
recursiveFileLookup Type: Boolean Whether to skip partition inference during schema inference. This does not affect which files are loaded. Default value: false

JSON options

Option
allowBackslashEscapingAnyCharacter Type: Boolean Whether to allow backslashes to escape any character that succeeds it. If not enabled, only characters that are explicitly listed by the JSON specification can be escaped. Default value: false
allowComments Type: Boolean Whether to allow the use of Java, C, and C++ style comments ('/', '*', and '//' varieties) within parsed content or not. Default value: false
allowNonNumericNumbers Type: Boolean Whether to allow the set of not-a-number (NaN) tokens as legal floating number values. Default value: true
allowNumericLeadingZeros Type: Boolean Whether to allow integral numbers to start with additional (ignorable) zeroes (for example, 000001). Default value: false
allowSingleQuotes Type: Boolean Whether to allow use of single quotes (apostrophe, character '\') for quoting strings (names and String values). Default value: true
allowUnquotedControlChars Type: Boolean Whether to allow JSON strings to contain unescaped control characters (ASCII characters with value less than 32, including tab and line feed characters) or not. Default value: false
allowUnquotedFieldNames Type: Boolean Whether to allow use of unquoted field names (which are allowed by JavaScript, but not by the JSON specification). Default value: false
badRecordsPath Type: String The path to store files for recording the information about bad JSON records. Default value: None
columnNameOfCorruptRecord Type: String The column for storing records that are malformed and cannot be parsed. If the mode for parsing is set as DROPMALFORMED, this column will be empty. Default value: _corrupt_record
dateFormat Type: String The format for parsing date strings. Default value: yyyy-MM-dd
dropFieldIfAllNull Type: Boolean Whether to ignore columns of all null values or empty arrays and structs during schema inference. Default value: false
encoding or charset Type: String The name of the encoding of the JSON files. See java.nio.charset.Charset for list of options. You cannot use UTF-16 and UTF-32 when multiline is true. Default value: UTF-8
inferTimestamp Type: Boolean Whether to try and infer timestamp strings as a TimestampType. When set to true, schema inference might take noticeably longer. You must enable cloudFiles.inferColumnTypes to use with Auto Loader. Default value: false
lineSep Type: String A string between two consecutive JSON records. Default value: None, which covers \r, \r\n, and \n
locale Type: String A java.util.Locale identifier. Influences default date, timestamp, and decimal parsing within the JSON. Default value: US
mode Type: String Parser mode around handling malformed records. One of 'PERMISSIVE', 'DROPMALFORMED', or 'FAILFAST'. Default value: PERMISSIVE
multiLine Type: Boolean Whether the JSON records span multiple lines. Default value: false
prefersDecimal Type: Boolean Attempts to infer strings as DecimalType instead of float or double type when possible. You must also use schema inference, either by enabling inferSchema or using cloudFiles.inferColumnTypes with Auto Loader. Default value: false
primitivesAsString Type: Boolean Whether to infer primitive types like numbers and booleans as StringType. Default value: false
readerCaseSensitive Type: Boolean Specifies the case sensitivity behavior when rescuedDataColumn is enabled. If true, rescue the data columns whose names differ by case from the schema; otherwise, read the data in a case-insensitive manner. Available in Databricks Runtime 13.3 and above. Default value: true
rescuedDataColumn Type: String Whether to collect all data that can’t be parsed due to a data type mismatch or schema mismatch (including column casing) to a separate column. This column is included by default when using Auto Loader. For more details, refer to What is the rescued data column?. Default value: None
singleVariantColumn Type: String Whether to ingest the entire JSON document, parsed into a single Variant column with the given string as the column’s name. If disabled, the JSON fields will be ingested into their own columns. Default value: None
timestampFormat Type: String The format for parsing timestamp strings. Default value: yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss[.SSS][XXX]
timeZone Type: String The java.time.ZoneId to use when parsing timestamps and dates. Default value: None

CSV options

Option
badRecordsPath Type: String The path to store files for recording the information about bad CSV records. Default value: None
charToEscapeQuoteEscaping Type: Char The character used to escape the character used for escaping quotes. For example, for the following record: [ " a\\", b ]: If the character to escape the '\' is undefined, the record won’t be parsed. The parser will read characters: [a],[\],["],[,],[ ],[b] and throw an error because it cannot find a closing quote. If the character to escape the '\' is defined as '\', the record will be read with 2 values: [a\] and [b]. Default value: '\0'
columnNameOfCorruptRecord Note Supported for Auto Loader. Not supported for COPY INTO. Type: String The column for storing records that are malformed and cannot be parsed. If the mode for parsing is set as DROPMALFORMED, this column will be empty. Default value: _corrupt_record
comment Type: Char Defines the character that represents a line comment when found in the beginning of a line of text. Use '\0' to disable comment skipping. Default value: '\u0000'
dateFormat Type: String The format for parsing date strings. Default value: yyyy-MM-dd
emptyValue Type: String String representation of an empty value. Default value: ""
encoding or charset Type: String The name of the encoding of the CSV files. See java.nio.charset.Charset for the list of options. UTF-16 and UTF-32 cannot be used when multiline is true. Default value: UTF-8
enforceSchema Type: Boolean Whether to forcibly apply the specified or inferred schema to the CSV files. If the option is enabled, headers of CSV files are ignored. This option is ignored by default when using Auto Loader to rescue data and allow schema evolution. Default value: true
escape Type: Char The escape character to use when parsing the data. Default value: '\'
header Type: Boolean Whether the CSV files contain a header. Auto Loader assumes that files have headers when inferring the schema. Default value: false
ignoreLeadingWhiteSpace Type: Boolean Whether to ignore leading whitespaces for each parsed value. Default value: false
ignoreTrailingWhiteSpace Type: Boolean Whether to ignore trailing whitespaces for each parsed value. Default value: false
inferSchema Type: Boolean Whether to infer the data types of the parsed CSV records or to assume all columns are of StringType. Requires an additional pass over the data if set to true. For Auto Loader, use cloudFiles.inferColumnTypes instead. Default value: false
lineSep Type: String A string between two consecutive CSV records. Default value: None, which covers \r, \r\n, and \n
locale Type: String A java.util.Locale identifier. Influences default date, timestamp, and decimal parsing within the CSV. Default value: US
maxCharsPerColumn Type: Int Maximum number of characters expected from a value to parse. Can be used to avoid memory errors. Defaults to -1, which means unlimited. Default value: -1
maxColumns Type: Int The hard limit of how many columns a record can have. Default value: 20480
mergeSchema Type: Boolean Whether to infer the schema across multiple files and to merge the schema of each file. Enabled by default for Auto Loader when inferring the schema. Default value: false
mode Type: String Parser mode around handling malformed records. One of 'PERMISSIVE', 'DROPMALFORMED', and 'FAILFAST'. Default value: PERMISSIVE
multiLine Type: Boolean Whether the CSV records span multiple lines. Default value: false
nanValue Type: String The string representation of a non-a-number value when parsing FloatType and DoubleType columns. Default value: "NaN"
negativeInf Type: String The string representation of negative infinity when parsing FloatType or DoubleType columns. Default value: "-Inf"
nullValue Type: String String representation of a null value. Default value: ""
parserCaseSensitive (deprecated) Type: Boolean While reading files, whether to align columns declared in the header with the schema case sensitively. This is true by default for Auto Loader. Columns that differ by case will be rescued in the rescuedDataColumn if enabled. This option has been deprecated in favor of readerCaseSensitive. Default value: false
positiveInf Type: String The string representation of positive infinity when parsing FloatType or DoubleType columns. Default value: "Inf"
preferDate Type: Boolean Attempts to infer strings as dates instead of timestamp when possible. You must also use schema inference, either by enabling inferSchema or using cloudFiles.inferColumnTypes with Auto Loader. Default value: true
quote Type: Char The character used for escaping values where the field delimiter is part of the value. Default value: "
readerCaseSensitive Type: Boolean Specifies the case sensitivity behavior when rescuedDataColumn is enabled. If true, rescue the data columns whose names differ by case from the schema; otherwise, read the data in a case-insensitive manner. Default value: true
rescuedDataColumn Type: String Whether to collect all data that can’t be parsed due to: a data type mismatch, and schema mismatch (including column casing) to a separate column. This column is included by default when using Auto Loader. For more details refer to What is the rescued data column?. Default value: None
sep or delimiter Type: String The separator string between columns. Default value: ","
skipRows Type: Int The number of rows from the beginning of the CSV file that should be ignored (including commented and empty rows). If header is true, the header will be the first unskipped and uncommented row. Default value: 0
timestampFormat Type: String The format for parsing timestamp strings. Default value: yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss[.SSS][XXX]
timeZone Type: String The java.time.ZoneId to use when parsing timestamps and dates. Default value: None
unescapedQuoteHandling Type: String The strategy for handling unescaped quotes. Allowed options: STOP_AT_CLOSING_QUOTE: If unescaped quotes are found in the input, accumulate the quote character and proceed parsing the value as a quoted value, until a closing quote is found. BACK_TO_DELIMITER: If unescaped quotes are found in the input, consider the value as an unquoted value. This will make the parser accumulate all characters of the current parsed value until the delimiter defined by sep is found. If no delimiter is found in the value, the parser will continue accumulating characters from the input until a delimiter or line ending is found. STOP_AT_DELIMITER: If unescaped quotes are found in the input, consider the value as an unquoted value. This will make the parser accumulate all characters until the delimiter defined by sep, or a line ending is found in the input. SKIP_VALUE: If unescaped quotes are found in the input, the content parsed for the given value will be skipped (until the next delimiter is found) and the value set in nullValue will be produced instead. RAISE_ERROR: If unescaped quotes are found in the input, a TextParsingException will be thrown. Default value: STOP_AT_DELIMITER

XML options

Option	Description	Scope
rowTag	The row tag of the XML files to treat as a row. In the example XML <books> <book><book>...<books>, the appropriate value is book. This is a required option.	read
samplingRatio	Defines a fraction of rows used for schema inference. XML built-in functions ignore this option. Default: 1.0.	read
excludeAttribute	Whether to exclude attributes in elements. Default: false.	read
mode	Mode for dealing with corrupt records during parsing. PERMISSIVE: For corrupted records, puts the malformed string into a field configured by columnNameOfCorruptRecord, and sets malformed fields to null. To keep corrupt records, you can set a string type field named columnNameOfCorruptRecord in a user-defined schema. If a schema does not have the field, corrupt records are dropped during parsing. When inferring a schema, the parser implicitly adds a columnNameOfCorruptRecord field in an output schema. DROPMALFORMED: Ignores corrupted records. This mode is unsupported for XML built-in functions. FAILFAST: Throws an exception when the parser meets corrupted records.	read
inferSchema	If true, attempts to infer an appropriate type for each resulting DataFrame column. If false, all resulting columns are of string type. Default: true. XML built-in functions ignore this option.	read
columnNameOfCorruptRecord	Allows renaming the new field that contains a malformed string created by PERMISSIVE mode. Default: spark.sql.columnNameOfCorruptRecord.	read
attributePrefix	The prefix for attributes to differentiate attributes from elements. This will be the prefix for field names. Default is _. Can be empty for reading XML, but not for writing.	read, write
valueTag	The tag used for the character data within elements that also have attribute(s) or child element(s) elements. User can specify the valueTag field in the schema or it will be added automatically during schema inference when character data is present in elements with other elements or attributes. Default: _VALUE	read,write
encoding	For reading, decodes the XML files by the given encoding type. For writing, specifies encoding (charset) of saved XML files. XML built-in functions ignore this option. Default: UTF-8.	read, write
ignoreSurroundingSpaces	Defines whether surrounding white spaces from values being read should be skipped. Default: true. Whitespace-only character data are ignored.	read
rowValidationXSDPath	Path to an optional XSD file that is used to validate the XML for each row individually. Rows that fail to validate are treated like parse errors as above. The XSD does not otherwise affect the schema provided, or inferred.	read
ignoreNamespace	If true, namespaces’ prefixes on XML elements and attributes are ignored. Tags <abc:author> and <def:author>, for example, are treated as if both are just <author>. Namespaces cannot be ignored on the rowTag element, only its read children. XML parsing is not namespace-aware even if false. Default: false.	read
timestampFormat	Custom timestamp format string that follows the datetime pattern format. This applies to timestamp type. Default: yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss[.SSS][XXX].	read, write
timestampNTZFormat	Custom format string for timestamp without timezone that follows the datetime pattern format. This applies to TimestampNTZType type. Default: yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss[.SSS]	read, write
dateFormat	Custom date format string that follows the datetime pattern format. This applies to date type. Default: yyyy-MM-dd.	read, write
locale	Sets a locale as a language tag in IETF BCP 47 format. For instance, locale is used while parsing dates and timestamps. Default: en-US.	read
rootTag	Root tag of the XML files. For example, in <books> <book><book>...</books>, the appropriate value is books. You can include basic attributes by specifying a value like books foo="bar". Default: ROWS.	write
declaration	Content of XML declaration to write at the start of every output XML file, before the rootTag. For example, a value of foo causes <?xml foo?> to be written. Set to an empty string to suppress. Default: version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes".	write
arrayElementName	Name of XML element that encloses each element of an array-valued column when writing. Default: item.	write
nullValue	Sets the string representation of a null value. Default: string null. When this is null, the parser does not write attributes and elements for fields.	read, write
compression	Compression code to use when saving to file. This can be one of the known case-insensitive shortened names (none, bzip2, gzip,lz4, snappy, and deflate). XML built-in functions ignore this option. Default: none.	write
validateName	If true, throws an error on XML element name validation failure. For example, SQL field names can have spaces, but XML element names cannot. Default: true.	write
readerCaseSensitive	Specifies the case sensitivity behavior when rescuedDataColumn is enabled. If true, rescue the data columns whose names differ by case from the schema; otherwise, read the data in a case-insensitive manner. Default: true.	read
rescuedDataColumn	Whether to collect all data that can’t be parsed due to a data type mismatch and schema mismatch (including column casing) to a separate column. This column is included by default when using Auto Loader. For more details, see What is the rescued data column?. Default: None.	read

PARQUET options

Option
datetimeRebaseMode Type: String Controls the rebasing of the DATE and TIMESTAMP values between Julian and Proleptic Gregorian calendars. Allowed values: EXCEPTION, LEGACY, and CORRECTED. Default value: LEGACY
int96RebaseMode Type: String Controls the rebasing of the INT96 timestamp values between Julian and Proleptic Gregorian calendars. Allowed values: EXCEPTION, LEGACY, and CORRECTED. Default value: LEGACY
mergeSchema Type: Boolean Whether to infer the schema across multiple files and to merge the schema of each file. Default value: false
readerCaseSensitive Type: Boolean Specifies the case sensitivity behavior when rescuedDataColumn is enabled. If true, rescue the data columns whose names differ by case from the schema; otherwise, read the data in a case-insensitive manner. Default value: true
rescuedDataColumn Type: String Whether to collect all data that can’t be parsed due to: a data type mismatch, and schema mismatch (including column casing) to a separate column. This column is included by default when using Auto Loader. For more details refer to What is the rescued data column?. Default value: None

AVRO options

Option
avroSchema Type: String Optional schema provided by a user in Avro format. When reading Avro, this option can be set to an evolved schema, which is compatible but different with the actual Avro schema. The deserialization schema will be consistent with the evolved schema. For example, if you set an evolved schema containing one additional column with a default value, the read result will contain the new column too. Default value: None
datetimeRebaseMode Type: String Controls the rebasing of the DATE and TIMESTAMP values between Julian and Proleptic Gregorian calendars. Allowed values: EXCEPTION, LEGACY, and CORRECTED. Default value: LEGACY
mergeSchema Type: Boolean Whether to infer the schema across multiple files and to merge the schema of each file. mergeSchema for Avro does not relax data types. Default value: false
readerCaseSensitive Type: Boolean Specifies the case sensitivity behavior when rescuedDataColumn is enabled. If true, rescue the data columns whose names differ by case from the schema; otherwise, read the data in a case-insensitive manner. Default value: true
rescuedDataColumn Type: String Whether to collect all data that can’t be parsed due to: a data type mismatch, and schema mismatch (including column casing) to a separate column. This column is included by default when using Auto Loader. For more details refer to What is the rescued data column?. Default value: None

BINARYFILE options

Binary files do not have any additional configuration options.

TEXT options

Option
encoding Type: String The name of the encoding of the TEXT files. See java.nio.charset.Charset for list of options. Default value: UTF-8
lineSep Type: String A string between two consecutive TEXT records. Default value: None, which covers \r, \r\n and \n
wholeText Type: Boolean Whether to read a file as a single record. Default value: false

ORC options

Option
mergeSchema Type: Boolean Whether to infer the schema across multiple files and to merge the schema of each file. Default value: false

Related articles

• Credentials

• DELETE

• INSERT

• MERGE

• PARTITION

• query

• UPDATE

• Get started using COPY INTO to load data