Convert FoxPro to DuckDB

Upload a .dbf file and get back a DuckDB file. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.

Click to upload or drag and drop

CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)

How your data is typed in DuckDB

Generated from the converter's own DuckDB type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.

Your dataDuckDB type
Whole numberBIGINT
Decimal (money)DECIMAL(10,2)
Floating pointDOUBLE
True / falseBOOLEAN
DateDATE
Date and timeTIMESTAMP
Short textVARCHAR
Long textVARCHAR
Binary dataBLOB

Working from a FoxPro table

FoxPro extended the dBase file layout with types dBase never had, and gave its memo files a different format and a different extension. Both of those differences change what comes out the other side, and both are read from the file.

  • The FoxPro-only field types are read as themselves: Currency (Y) becomes an exact decimal rather than a float, Integer (I) a 64-bit integer, DateTime (T) a timestamp, Double (B) a floating-point number.
  • Memo text is expected in a .fpt, chosen from the Visual FoxPro and FoxPro 2.x version bytes 0x30, 0x31, 0x32, 0xF5 and 0xFB, rather than in the dBase .dbt.
  • Only the .dbf itself is read. A table bound to a Visual FoxPro database container keeps its long field names and relations in the .dbc, so columns arrive under the short names in the table header.

Decimals and text in the .duckdb file

DuckDB takes the source's declared types more nearly unchanged than any other target here, which makes the two places where it cannot the things worth reading: the width of a decimal, and the length of a string.

  • DECIMAL tops out at 38 digits, so a wider source column is clamped rather than refused: an Oracle NUMBER(50,10) is created here as DECIMAL(38,10), and the scale is never allowed to grow past the precision holding it.
  • A decimal that declared no scale gets six places for its fraction rather than none, inside that same rule: a source precision of 10 becomes DECIMAL(10,6), one of 5 becomes DECIMAL(5,5), and one that declared no precision either becomes DECIMAL(18,6).
  • Strings become VARCHAR with no length attached to them. DuckDB's VARCHAR is unbounded, so no column has to be sized in advance and no row can be turned away for being longer than the column it goes in.

Reading FoxPro

  • Numeric fields with decimals are read as exact decimals, not floats, so currency does not drift.
  • Character field widths are read from the header and carried into the target.
  • The code page declared in the file header is used, so Cyrillic, Western European and other legacy DOS encodings decode correctly instead of turning into mojibake. 157 code pages are recognised.
  • Files written by dBase III or Clipper declare no code page at all — the header byte for it did not exist yet. For those, the most plausible encoding is chosen by inspecting the text, and the conversion tells you it had to guess. The API takes a sourceEncoding parameter (e.g. cp866) to force it instead of guessing, though the widget above does not have a control for it yet.
  • Memo columns keep their text in a separate .dbt or .fpt file. If the .dbf declares one and it was not uploaded, the conversion stops and tells you which file to add, rather than handing you a table whose long text is silently blank.

Writing DuckDB

  • A real .duckdb file, not a script — open it straight away with the DuckDB CLI.
  • DuckDB has genuine DECIMAL and BOOLEAN types, so nothing is flattened on the way in.

What you get

A ZIP containing database.duckdb. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.

Questions

Is converting FoxPro to DuckDB free?
Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
Will my FoxPro data keep its types in DuckDB?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real DuckDB types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
Do you store my file?
No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.

This conversion, under other names

Convert FoxPro to something else

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