Convert mysqldump to CSV
Upload a .sql file and get back a CSV 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 CSV
Generated from the converter's own CSV type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | CSV type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | text (CSV has no types) |
| Decimal (money) | text (CSV has no types) |
| Floating point | text (CSV has no types) |
| True / false | text (CSV has no types) |
| Date | text (CSV has no types) |
| Date and time | text (CSV has no types) |
| Short text | text (CSV has no types) |
| Long text | text (CSV has no types) |
| Binary data | text (CSV has no types) |
Working from a mysqldump file
mysqldump writes a plain-text .sql file with a very consistent shape, which makes it one of the easiest dumps to read: its own syntax announces the dialect, and its rows are inline rather than in a separate archive.
- →Every mysqldump file contains ENGINE=InnoDB or AUTO_INCREMENT, which is exactly what the dialect detection looks for, so backtick-quoted identifiers and MySQL types parse without you choosing anything.
- →mysqldump packs many rows into one extended INSERT by default, and each tuple in it becomes a row, so there is no need to dump again with --skip-extended-insert.
- →The file is decoded as UTF-8 with unreadable bytes replaced, so a legacy latin1 dump arrives with damaged accented text. Dump with --default-character-set=utf8mb4, or run the file through iconv first.
- →mysqldump --tab is not a dump at all: the schema goes to a .sql file and the rows to headerless tab-separated .txt files. Neither half is convertible on its own, and the data files have no header row to name their columns, so dump again without --tab.
The shape of the CSV files you get
CSV is where the type information stops, so what is left to describe is the file itself: how a row is terminated, which fields are quoted, and how a value that used to have a type is spelled out as characters.
- →Rows end with a carriage return and a line feed, the RFC 4180 ending, while a newline inside a quoted field stays the single character it always was. The encoding is UTF-8 with no byte-order mark in front of it.
- →Quotes go on only where they are needed - a field holding a comma, a double quote or a newline - and a quote inside a field is doubled rather than escaped with a backslash. Every other field is written bare.
- →Decimal values are written digit for digit and never through a floating-point number, so a money column that was exact in the source is still exact in the file. Booleans are written lower case, as true and false, which is the spelling this converter's own reader takes back as a boolean.
Reading mysqldump
- →Parsed with a real SQL parser, not regular expressions, so a value containing a closing parenthesis or a semicolon cannot split a row in half.
- →CREATE TABLE types, primary keys, NOT NULL and AUTO_INCREMENT are all read from the dump.
- →The source dialect is detected from the dump itself — MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server dumps all parse.
Writing CSV
- →One file per table, with a header row.
- →NULL is written as an empty field, never the word "None".
- →Binary data is written as hex, which is reversible.
What you get
A ZIP containing <table>.csv. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.
Questions
- Is converting mysqldump to CSV 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 mysqldump data keep its types in CSV?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real CSV 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.