Export xBase/dBase files into MySQL

errr — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:18:36 +0000

If you have an application that uses xBase/dBase files to store data you may at some point need to export that data into a real database, like MySQL. This is a really simple task thanks to a nifty app called dbf2mysql. For my example I was using some CRM software called ACT. They used dBase III files to store their data. So I just went to the windows box that was holding my dBase file. I used winscp to move it to my Linux box. Next I used:

dbf2mysql -vvv -c -f -d dbname -r -U dbuser -P dbuserpass CustomerInfo.dbf

What this does is turns up the verbose logging to my screen, next the -c will create a table in my database named “test” (this is default and can be changed with the -t flag) -f makes all the field named from the dbf file be changed to lower case, next the -d, -U, and -P seem pretty obvious, and that leaves us with the -r which will Trim trailing and leading white space from CHAR type fields. All this info and more can be found in the man page. Here is the trail end of what I got from the output of my command:

fields in dbh 71, allocated mem for query 4293, query size 2156
Inserting records
Inserting record 0
Inserting record 100
Inserting record 200
Inserting record 300
Inserting record 400
Inserting record 500
Inserting record 600
Inserting record 700
Inserting record 800
Closing up….

Now I can log into phpmyadmin and verify that all my data has been moved successfully.

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Export xBase/dBase files into MySQL