export-query-results-to-a-csv.md

Export Query Results To A CSV

Digging through the results of queries in Postgres's psql is great if you are a programmer, but eventually someone without the skills or access may need to check out that data. Exporting the results of a query to CSV is a friendly way to share said results because most people will have a program on their computer that can read a CSV file.

For example, exporting all your pokemon to /tmp/pokemon_dump.csv can be accomplished with:

copy (select * from pokemons) to '/tmp/pokemon_dump.csv' csv;

Because we are grabbing the entire table, we can just specify the table name instead of using a subquery:

copy pokemons to '/tmp/pokemon_dump.csv' csv;

Include the column names as headers to the CSV file with the header keyword:

copy (select * from pokemons) to '/tmp/pokemon_dump.csv' csv header;

If your user has limited access, you can use the \copy command like so:

\copy (select * from pokemons) to '/tmp/pokemon_dump.csv' with csv header;

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