SELECT INTO DUMPFILE

Syntax

SELECT ... INTO DUMPFILE 'file_path'

Description

SELECT ... INTO DUMPFILE is a SELECT clause which writes the resultset into a single unformatted row, without any separators, in a file. The results will not be returned to the client.

file_path can be an absolute path, or a relative path starting from the data directory. It can only be specified as a string literal, not as a variable. However, the statement can be dynamically composed and executed as a prepared statement to work around this limitation.

This statement is binary-safe and so is particularly useful for writing BLOB values to file. It can be used, for example, to copy an image or an audio document from the database to a file.

The file must not exist. It cannot be overwritten. A user needs the FILE privilege to run this statement. Also, MariaDB needs permission to write files in the specified location. If the secure_file_priv system variable is set to a non-empty directory name, the file can only be written to that directory.

Since MariaDB 5.1, the character_set_filesystem system variable has controlled interpretation of file names that are given as literal strings.

Example

SELECT _utf8'Hello world!' INTO DUMPFILE '/tmp/world';

SELECT LOAD_FILE('/tmp/world') AS world;
+--------------+
| world        |
+--------------+
| Hello world! |
+--------------+

See Also

• SELECT
• LOAD_FILE()
• SELECT INTO Variable
• SELECT INTO OUTFILE