psql import csv and generate uuid

Question

I'm trying to import from CSV to Postgres and generate a uuid, uuid_generate_v4(), during the import to populate a table.

Postgres version: 14

Postgres Table

• Country
  • id (primary key)
  • country_name
  • country_ISO_Code

Psql import

\copy "Country" (select uuid_generate_v4() as "id", "country_name", "country_ISO_code") FROM 'C:\Users\.......\data.csv' (format csv, header, delimiter ',')

However, that throws an error \copy: parse error at "as"

How do I properly instruct psql to use uuid_generate_v4() as id column?

Answer 1

You can't copy "from" a select statement. You need to define a default value for your primary key:

create table country
(
  id uuid primary key default gen_random_uuid(),
  country_name text not null,
  country_iso_code text not null
);

Then tell the \copy command that your input file only contains two columns:

\copy country (country_name, country_iso_code) from 'data.csv' (format csv, header, delimiter ',')