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spec_sql_append_table

Value

dbAppendTable() returns a scalar numeric.

Failure modes

If the table does not exist, or the new data in values is not a data frame or has different column names, an error is raised; the remote table remains unchanged.

An error is raised when calling this method for a closed or invalid connection. An error is also raised if name cannot be processed with dbQuoteIdentifier() or if this results in a non-scalar. Invalid values for the row.names argument (non-scalars, unsupported data types, NA) also raise an error.

Passing a value argument different to NULL to the row.names argument (in particular TRUE, NA, and a string) raises an error.

Specification

SQL keywords can be used freely in table names, column names, and data. Quotes, commas, spaces, and other special characters such as newlines and tabs, can also be used in the data, and, if the database supports non-syntactic identifiers, also for table names and column names.

The following data types must be supported at least, and be read identically with dbReadTable():

  • integer

  • numeric (the behavior for Inf and NaN is not specified)

  • logical

  • NA as NULL

  • 64-bit values (using "bigint" as field type); the result can be

    • converted to a numeric, which may lose precision,

    • converted a character vector, which gives the full decimal representation

    • written to another table and read again unchanged

  • character (in both UTF-8 and native encodings), supporting empty strings (before and after non-empty strings)

  • factor (returned as character, with a warning)

  • list of raw (if supported by the database)

  • objects of type blob::blob (if supported by the database)

  • date (if supported by the database; returned as Date) also for dates prior to 1970 or 1900 or after 2038

  • time (if supported by the database; returned as objects that inherit from difftime)

  • timestamp (if supported by the database; returned as POSIXct respecting the time zone but not necessarily preserving the input time zone), also for timestamps prior to 1970 or 1900 or after 2038 respecting the time zone but not necessarily preserving the input time zone)

Mixing column types in the same table is supported.

The name argument is processed as follows, to support databases that allow non-syntactic names for their objects:

  • If an unquoted table name as string: dbAppendTable() will do the quoting, perhaps by calling dbQuoteIdentifier(conn, x = name)

  • If the result of a call to dbQuoteIdentifier(): no more quoting is done to support databases that allow non-syntactic names for their objects:

The row.names argument must be NULL, the default value. Row names are ignored.

The value argument must be a data frame with a subset of the columns of the existing table. The order of the columns does not matter.