pgloader

# Loading Fixed Width Data File with pgloader

Some data providers still use a format where each column is specified with a starting index position and a given length. Usually the columns are blank-padded when the data is shorter than the full reserved range.

## The Command

To load data with pgloader you need to define in a command the operations in some details. Here's our example for loading Fixed Width Data, using a file provided by the US census.

You can find more files from them at the Census 2000 Gazetteer Files.

Here's our command:

    LOAD ARCHIVE
       FROM http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/docs/gazetteer/places2k.zip
       INTO postgresql:///pgloader

       BEFORE LOAD DO
         $$ drop table if exists places; $$,
         $$ create table places
           (
              usps      char(2)  not null,
              fips      char(2)  not null,
              fips_code char(5),
              loc_name  varchar(64)
           );
         $$

       LOAD FIXED
            FROM FILENAME MATCHING ~/places2k.txt/
                 WITH ENCODING latin1
                 (
                    usps           from   0 for  2,
                    fips           from   2 for  2,
                    fips_code      from   4 for  5,
                    "LocationName" from   9 for 64 [trim right whitespace],
                    p              from  73 for  9,
                    h              from  82 for  9,
                    land           from  91 for 14,
                    water          from 105 for 14,
                    ldm            from 119 for 14,
                    wtm            from 131 for 14,
                    lat            from 143 for 10,
                    long           from 153 for 11
                 )
            INTO postgresql:///pgloader?places
                 (
    	        usps, fips, fips_code, "LocationName"
                 );

You can see the full list of options in the pgloader reference manual, with a complete description of the options you see here.

## The Data

This command allows loading the following file content, where we are only showing the first couple of lines:

    AL0100124Abbeville city                                                       2987     1353      40301945        120383   15.560669    0.046480 31.566367 -85.251300
    AL0100460Adamsville city                                                      4965     2042      50779330         14126   19.606010    0.005454 33.590411 -86.949166
    AL0100484Addison town                                                          723      339       9101325             0    3.514041    0.000000 34.200042 -87.177851
    AL0100676Akron town                                                            521      239       1436797             0    0.554750    0.000000 32.876425 -87.740978
    AL0100820Alabaster city                                                      22619     8594      53023800        141711   20.472605    0.054715 33.231162 -86.823829
    AL0100988Albertville city                                                    17247     7090      67212867        258738   25.951034    0.099899 34.265362 -86.211261
    AL0101132Alexander City city                                                 15008     6855     100534344        433413   38.816529    0.167342 32.933157 -85.936008

## Loading the data

Let's start the `pgloader` command with our `census-places.load` command file:

    $ pgloader census-places.load
    ... LOG Starting pgloader, log system is ready.
    ... LOG Parsing commands from file "/Users/dim/dev/pgloader/test/census-places.load"
    ... LOG Fetching 'http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/docs/gazetteer/places2k.zip'
    ... LOG Extracting files from archive '//private/var/folders/w7/9n8v8pw54t1gngfff0lj16040000gn/T/pgloader//places2k.zip'

           table name       read   imported     errors            time
    -----------------  ---------  ---------  ---------  --------------
             download          0          0          0          1.494s
              extract          0          0          0          1.013s
          before load          2          2          0          0.013s
    -----------------  ---------  ---------  ---------  --------------
               places      25375      25375          0          0.499s
    -----------------  ---------  ---------  ---------  --------------
    Total import time      25375      25375          0          3.019s

We can see that http://pgloader.io did download the file from its HTTP URL location then unziped it before the loading itself.

Note that the output of the command has been edited to facilitate its browsing online.