From Save MySQL query results into a text or CSV file:
SELECT order_id,product_name,qty
FROM orders
WHERE foo = 'bar'
INTO OUTFILE '/var/lib/mysql-files/orders.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n';
Note: That syntax may need to be reordered to
SELECT order_id,product_name,qty
INTO OUTFILE '/var/lib/mysql-files/orders.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
FROM orders
WHERE foo = 'bar';
in more recent versions of MySQL.
Using this command, columns names will not be exported.
Also note that /var/lib/mysql-files/orders.csv
will be on the server that is running MySQL. The user that the MySQL process is running under must have permissions to write to the directory chosen, or the command will fail.
If you want to write output to your local machine from a remote server (especially a hosted or virtualize machine such as Heroku or Amazon RDS), this solution is not suitable.
Timestamps in MySQL are generally used to track changes to records, and are often updated every time the record is changed. If you want to store a specific value you should use a datetime field.
If you meant that you want to decide between using a UNIX timestamp or a native MySQL datetime field, go with the native format. You can do calculations within MySQL that way
("SELECT DATE_ADD(my_datetime, INTERVAL 1 DAY)")
and it is simple to change the format of the value to a UNIX timestamp ("SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(my_datetime)")
when you query the record if you want to operate on it with PHP.
Best Answer
There is no internal MySQL command to trace this, it's a little too abstract. The file might be in 5 (or more?) locations, and they would all be valid because they load cascading.
Those are the default locations MySQL looks at. If it finds more than one, it will load each of them & values override each other (in the listed order, I think). Also, the
--defaults-file
parameter can override the whole thing, so... basically, it's a huge pain in the butt.But thanks to it being so confusing, there's a good chance it's just in /etc/my.cnf.
(if you just want to see the values:
SHOW VARIABLES
, but you'll need the permissions to do so.)