MySQL | LOAD_FILE method
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MySQL's LOAD_FILE(~) method reads the specified file and returns its contents as a string.
Parameters
1. file_name | file
The file whose contents we want to return.
Conditions
The file must be located on the server host.
You must provide the full file path for the file.
You must have the
FILEprivilege. The below query can be run to check for the privilege:SELECT USER, FILE_PRIV FROM mysql.user;The size of the file in bytes must be less than that specified in max_allowed_packet system variable.
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'max_allowed_packet';+--------------------+----------+| Variable_name | Value |+--------------------+----------+| max_allowed_packet | 67108864 |+--------------------+----------+If the
secure_file_privsystem variable is set with a directory, the file to load must be located in that directory:SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'secure_file_priv';+------------------+-------+| Variable_name | Value |+------------------+-------+| secure_file_priv | NULL |+------------------+-------+
A value of NULL means all import and export operations are disabled by the server so you will not be able to load the file. You can find out how to update this system variable here.
Return value
A string containing contents of the specified file.
Examples
To load contents of the file example.txt located under /Users/Bob file path:
SELECT LOAD_FILE('/Users/Bob/example.txt');
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+| LOAD_FILE('/Users/Bob/test.txt') |+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+| test |+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
We can see that the content of the file is 'test'.
