How to export table as CSV with headings on Postgresql?

I'm trying to export a PostgreSQL table with headings to a CSV file via command line, however I get it to export to CSV file, but without headings.

My code looks as follows:

COPY products_273 to '/tmp/products_199.csv' delimiters',';

COPY products_273 TO '/tmp/products_199.csv' WITH (FORMAT CSV, HEADER);

as described in the manual.

From psql command line:

\COPY my_table TO 'filename' CSV HEADER

no semi-colon at the end.

instead of just table name, you can also write a query for getting only selected column data.

COPY (select id,name from tablename) TO 'filepath/aa.csv' DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER;

with admin privilege

\COPY (select id,name from tablename) TO 'filepath/aa.csv' DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER;

When I don't have permission to write a file out from Postgres I find that I can run the query from the command line.

psql -U user -d db_name -c "Copy (Select * From foo_table LIMIT 10) To STDOUT With CSV HEADER DELIMITER ',';" > foo_data.csv

This works

psql dbname -F , --no-align -c "SELECT * FROM TABLE"

For version 9.5 I use, it would be like this:

COPY products_273 TO '/tmp/products_199.csv' WITH (FORMAT CSV, HEADER);

The simplest way (using psql) seems to be by using --csv flag:

psql --csv -c "SELECT * FROM products_273" > '/tmp/products_199.csv'

This solution worked for me using \copy.

psql -h <host> -U <user> -d <dbname> -c "\copy <table_name> FROM '<path to csvfile/file.csv>' with (format csv,header true, delimiter ',');"

Heres how I got it working power shell using pgsl connnect to a Heroku PG database:

I had to first change the client encoding to utf8 like this: \encoding UTF8

Then dumped the data to a CSV file this:

\copy (SELECT * FROM my_table) TO  C://wamp64/www/spider/chebi2/dump.csv CSV DELIMITER '~'

I used ~ as the delimiter because I don't like CSV files, I usually use TSV files, but it won't let me add '\t' as the delimiter, so I used ~ because its a rarely used characeter.

The COPY command isn't what is restricted. What is restricted is directing the output from the TO to anywhere except to STDOUT. However, there is no restriction on specifying the output file via the \o command.

\o '/tmp/products_199.csv';
COPY products_273 TO STDOUT WITH (FORMAT CSV, HEADER);

copy (anysql query datawanttoexport) to 'fileablsoutepathwihname' delimiter ',' csv header;

Using this u can export data also.

I am posting this answer because none of the other answers given here actually worked for me. I could not use COPY from within Postgres, because I did not have the correct permissions. So I chose "Export grid rows" and saved the output as UTF-8.

The psql version given by @Brian also did not work for me, for a different reason. The reason it did not work is that apparently the Windows command prompt (I was using Windows) was meddling around with the encoding on its own. I kept getting this error:

> ERROR: character with byte sequence 0x81 in encoding "WIN1252" has no equivalent in encoding "UTF8"

The solution I ended up using was to write a short JDBC script (Java) which read the CSV file and issued insert statements directly into my Postgres table. This worked, but the command prompt also would have worked had it not been altering the encoding.

Try this: "COPY products_273 FROM '\tmp\products_199.csv' DELIMITER ',' CSV HEADER"

In pgAdmin, highlight your query statement just like when you use F5 to execute and press F9 - this will open the file browser so you can pick where you save your CSV.

If you are using Azure Data Studio, the instruction are here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53727252/azure-data-studio-save-as-csv.

I know this isn't a universal solution, but most of the time you just want to grab the file by hand.