Importing data from Amazon S3 to your RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance - Amazon Relational Database Service
Importing an Amazon S3 file that uses a custom delimiterImporting an Amazon S3 compressed (gzip) fileImporting an encoded Amazon S3 file

Importing data from Amazon S3 to your RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance

You import data from your Amazon S3 bucket by using the table_import_from_s3 function of the aws_s3 extension. For reference information, see aws_s3.table_import_from_s3.

Note

The following examples use the IAM role method to allow access to the Amazon S3 bucket. Thus, the aws_s3.table_import_from_s3 function calls don't include credential parameters.

The following shows a typical example.

postgres=> SELECT aws_s3.table_import_from_s3(
   't1',
   '', 
   '(format csv)',
   :'s3_uri'
);

The parameters are the following:

  • t1 – The name for the table in the PostgreSQL DB instance to copy the data into.

  • '' – An optional list of columns in the database table. You can use this parameter to indicate which columns of the S3 data go in which table columns. If no columns are specified, all the columns are copied to the table. For an example of using a column list, see Importing an Amazon S3 file that uses a custom delimiter.

  • (format csv) – PostgreSQL COPY arguments. The copy process uses the arguments and format of the PostgreSQL COPY command to import the data. Choices for format include comma-separated value (CSV) as shown in this example, text, and binary. The default is text.

  • s3_uri – A structure that contains the information identifying the Amazon S3 file. For an example of using the aws_commons.create_s3_uri function to create an s3_uri structure, see Overview of importing data from Amazon S3 data.

For more information about this function, see aws_s3.table_import_from_s3.

The aws_s3.table_import_from_s3 function returns text. To specify other kinds of files for import from an Amazon S3 bucket, see one of the following examples.

Note

Importing 0 bytes file will cause an error.

Importing an Amazon S3 file that uses a custom delimiter

The following example shows how to import a file that uses a custom delimiter. It also shows how to control where to put the data in the database table using the column_list parameter of the aws_s3.table_import_from_s3 function.

For this example, assume that the following information is organized into pipe-delimited columns in the Amazon S3 file.

1|foo1|bar1|elephant1
2|foo2|bar2|elephant2
3|foo3|bar3|elephant3
4|foo4|bar4|elephant4
...
To import a file that uses a custom delimiter

  1. Create a table in the database for the imported data.

    postgres=> CREATE TABLE test (a text, b text, c text, d text, e text);

  2. Use the following form of the aws_s3.table_import_from_s3 function to import data from the Amazon S3 file.

    You can include the aws_commons.create_s3_uri function call inline within the aws_s3.table_import_from_s3 function call to specify the file. 

    postgres=> SELECT aws_s3.table_import_from_s3(
   'test',
   'a,b,d,e',
   'DELIMITER ''|''', 
   aws_commons.create_s3_uri('amzn-s3-demo-bucket', 'pipeDelimitedSampleFile', 'us-east-2')
);

The data is now in the table in the following columns.

postgres=> SELECT * FROM test;
a | b | c | d | e 
---+------+---+---+------+-----------
1 | foo1 | | bar1 | elephant1
2 | foo2 | | bar2 | elephant2
3 | foo3 | | bar3 | elephant3
4 | foo4 | | bar4 | elephant4

Importing an Amazon S3 compressed (gzip) file

The following example shows how to import a file from Amazon S3 that is compressed with gzip. The file that you import needs to have the following Amazon S3 metadata:

  • Key: Content-Encoding

  • Value: gzip

If you upload the file using the AWS Management Console, the metadata is typically applied by the system. For information about uploading files to Amazon S3 using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the API, see Uploading objects in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.

For more information about Amazon S3 metadata and details about system-provided metadata, see Editing object metadata in the Amazon S3 console in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.

Import the gzip file into your RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance as shown following.

postgres=> CREATE TABLE test_gzip(id int, a text, b text, c text, d text);
postgres=> SELECT aws_s3.table_import_from_s3(
 'test_gzip', '', '(format csv)',
 'amzn-s3-demo-bucket', 'test-data.gz', 'us-east-2'
);

Importing an encoded Amazon S3 file

The following example shows how to import a file from Amazon S3 that has Windows-1252 encoding.

postgres=> SELECT aws_s3.table_import_from_s3(
 'test_table', '', 'encoding ''WIN1252''',
 aws_commons.create_s3_uri('amzn-s3-demo-bucket', 'SampleFile', 'us-east-2')
);