SQL won't insert null values with BULK INSERT

Question

I have a CSV file and each line looks similar to this:

EASTTEXAS,NULL,BELLVILLE AREA,NULL,BELLVILLE AREA,RGP,NULL,NULL,0,NULL,NULL,NULL,1,1,PM,PM Settings,NU         


        

Answer 1

A late PS.

Note that there seems to be a bug if the last column is a DATETIME type and the value is null, then you MUST have a (normally superfluous but accepted) field separator after the empty field, before the line-separator, or you'll get an error.

ADD: This does not consistently work (sometimes it does though!?!?), to make it stable change your ROWterminator to begin with the FIELDterminator

e.g. FIELDTERMINATOR = '#', ROWTERMINATOR = '#\n'

Below an example of the error you get when it messes things up:

Bulk load data conversion error (type mismatch or invalid character for the specified codepage) for row 1, column 31 (MyDateTimeField).

(And yes I tried an all ASCII example with less than 7F chars and got the same)

Example:

The first bulks fails a lot. The other fails on the fifth only, despite the similarity with the second, but nothing is allowed at the end in this special case...

Test data:

1#2017-06-13 19:00:11.247#0##2017-06-13 19:00:11.247#
2#2017-06-13 19:09:08.817#0##2017-06-13 19:00:11.247#123#
3#2017-06-13 18:44:07.980#1###
4#2017-06-13 09:39:18.367#11## #
5#2017-06-13 09:39:18.370#4###123#

and sql

CREATE TABLE TEST_Bulk(
    id int,
    ts1 datetime,
    txt varchar(40) NULL,
    ts2 datetime,
    ts3 datetime,
) 
GO

BULK INSERT TEST_Bulk FROM 'D:\File.txt' WITH (FIRSTROW=1, FIELDTERMINATOR = '#', ROWTERMINATOR = '\n', CODEPAGE= 'ACP' ,TABLOCK)

BULK INSERT TEST_Bulk FROM 'D:\File.txt' WITH (FIRSTROW=1, FIELDTERMINATOR = '#', ROWTERMINATOR = '#\n', CODEPAGE= 'ACP' ,TABLOCK)

select * from TEST_Bulk

drop table TEST_Bulk