Convert pg_dump to CSV
Upload a .backup or .dump 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 pg_dump file
pg_dump has enough flags to change what its output even contains, and a few of them decide whether the file in front of you is convertible at all. These are the ones that matter here.
- →pg_dump -Fc and a plain pg_dump > file.sql both work, and so does --inserts or --column-inserts, though neither is necessary: the default COPY output is read too.
- →--schema-only gives you the tables with no rows in them. That is a valid conversion, and almost never the one that was wanted.
- →--data-only is the opposite problem: rows arrive with no CREATE TABLE to name their columns, and the conversion says so rather than inventing names for them.
- →Ownership and privilege statements are dropped while the archive is unpacked, so a dump taken as one role converts without that role having to exist anywhere.
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 pg_dump
- →Reads pg_dump custom-format archives (.backup, .dump) — pgAdmin's default backup option — as well as plain SQL dumps.
- →Data written as COPY blocks is read, not just INSERT statements. COPY is pg_dump's default, so a reader that only understands INSERT returns your tables with none of their rows.
- →Primary keys declared by a later ALTER TABLE, which is how pg_dump writes them, are preserved.
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 pg_dump 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 pg_dump 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.