Connect to CSV Data and Transfer Data in Talend

This article shows how you can easily integrate the CData JDBC driver for CSV into your workflow in Talend. This article uses the CData JDBC Driver for CSV to transfer CSV data in a job flow in Talend.

Connect to CSV in Talend as a JDBC Data Source

You can follow the procedure below to establish a JDBC connection to CSV:

1. Add a new database connection to CSV data: To add a new connection, expand the Metadata node, right-click the Db Connections node, and then click Create Connection.
2. In the resulting wizard, enter a name for the connection.

3. On the next page, select Generic JDBC from the DB Type menu and enter the JDBC URL.

   The DataSource property must be set to a valid local folder name.

   Also, specify the IncludeFiles property to work with text files having extensions that differ from .csv, .tab, or .txt. Specify multiple file extensions in a comma-separated list. You can also set Extended Properties compatible with the Microsoft Jet OLE DB 4.0 driver. Alternatively, you can provide the format of text files in a Schema.ini file.

   Set UseRowNumbers to true if you are deleting or updating in CSV. This will create a new column with the name RowNumber which will be used as key for that table.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the CSV JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.csv.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   A typical JDBC URL is below:

   jdbc:csv:DataSource=MyCSVFilesFolder;
4. Enter the path to the cdata.jdbc.csv.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
5. Right-click the connection and then click Retrieve Schema.
6. Click Next with the default options to select the tables you want to import.
7. Finish the wizard with the default options.

Output the Customer Table to a Flat File

You can follow the procedure below to transfer the Customer table to a flat file output component:

1. In the Table Schemas node, drag the tables to the workspace.
2. In the dialog that is displayed, select the tJDBCInput component.
3. Next, drag a tFileOutputDelimited component from the Business Intelligence tab of the Palette into the workspace.
4. Right-click the Customer tJDBCInput component and drag a vector to the output file.

Run the project to transfer the data.