How to copy from CSV file to PostgreSQL table with headers in CSV file?

I want to copy a CSV file to a Postgres table. There are about 100 columns in this table, so I do not want to rewrite them if I don't have to.

I am using the \copy table from 'table.csv' delimiter ',' csv; command but without a table created I get ERROR: relation "table" does not exist. If I add a blank table I get no error, but nothing happens. I tried this command two or three times and there was no output or messages, but the table was not updated when I checked it through PGAdmin.

Is there a way to import a table with headers included like I am trying to do?


This worked. The first row had column names in it.

COPY wheat FROM 'wheat_crop_data.csv' DELIMITER ';' CSV HEADER

With the Python library pandas, you can easily create column names and infer data types from a csv file.

from sqlalchemy import create_engine
import pandas as pd

engine = create_engine('postgresql://user:pass@localhost/db_name')
df = pd.read_csv('/path/to/csv_file')
df.to_sql('pandas_db', engine)

The if_exists parameter can be set to replace or append to an existing table, e.g. df.to_sql('pandas_db', engine, if_exists='replace'). This works for additional input file types as well, docs here and here.