Importing Structure and Data - Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.8 for Effective MySQL Management - page 131

can also specify manually what characters terminate the lines. The usual choice is \n
for UNIX-based systems, \r\n for DOS or Windows systems, and \r for Mac-based
system. If in doubt, we can use a hexadecimal file editor on our client computer (not
part of phpMyAdmin) to examine the exact codes.
By default, phpMyAdmin expects a CSV file with the same number of fields and
the same field order as the target table, but this can be changed by entering a
comma-separated list of column names in Column names , respecting the source
file format. For example, let's say our source file only contains the author ID and
author name information:
"1","John Smith"
"2","Maria Sunshine"
We'd have to put author_id , author_name in Column names to match the source file.
When we click Go , the import is executed and we get a confirmation. We might also
see the actual INSERT queries generated if the total size of the file is not too big.
CSV Using LOAD DATA
With this method, phpMyAdmin relies on the server's LOAD DATA INFILE or LOAD
DATA LOCAL INFILE mechanisms to do the actual import, instead of processing the
data internally. These statements are the fastest way for importing text in MySQL.
They cause MySQL to start a read operation from a file located on the MySQL server
( LOAD DATA INFILE ) or from another place ( LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE ), which in this
context, is always the web server's file system. If the MySQL server is located on
a computer other than the web server, we won't be able to use the LOAD DATA
INFILE mechanism.