MySQL load dates in mm/dd/yyyy format

Question

I've got a MySQL load script that almost works, it is perfect except for the date columns, which are not in a MySql friendly format.

load data infile  '/Users/pfarrell/sandbox/waybase/folklore/Titles_1976.csv'
into table fix76
fields terminated by ','
enclosed by '"'
ignore 1 lines
(  patentId,  USPatentNum,  title,  grantDate,  filedDate)

The problem is that my dates are in mm/dd/yyyy format. Looks like the str_to_date function is what I want, but I can't figure out how to use it in the load command.
I'm envisioning something like:

grantDate = STR_TO_DATE(something, '%m/%d/%Y'),

but that doesn't work.

Answer 1

You can load the date strings into user-defined variables, and then use STR_TO_DATE(@date, '%m/%d/%Y') to convert them to MySQL dates.

Try this:

load data infile  '/Users/pfarrell/sandbox/waybase/folklore/Titles_1976.csv'
into table fix76
fields terminated by ','
enclosed by '"'
ignore 1 lines
(  patentId,  USPatentNum,  title,  @grantDate,  @filedDate)
set grantDate = STR_TO_DATE(@grantDate, '%m/%d/%Y'),
filedDate = STR_TO_DATE(@filedDate, '%m/%d/%Y')