SanjayLakhanpal

In this articles ,  we will learn how to load a XML file in a snowflake database .

Step 1: Convert the XML file to a compatible format As mentioned earlier, Snowflake natively supports loading and querying JSON files. Therefore, we need to first convert the XML file to a JSON file using an appropriate tool. One such tool is the xml2json library in Python. You can also use an online converter like the one provided by www.freeformatter.com.

Here is an example Python code to convert an XML file to a JSON file:

import xmltodict
import json



# Read the XML file
with open('example.xml', 'r') as file:
    xml_data = file.read()

# Convert the XML data to a dictionary
dict_data = xmltodict.parse(xml_data)

# Convert the dictionary to a JSON file
json_data = json.dumps(dict_data)

# Write the JSON data to a file
with open('example.json', 'w') as file:
    file.write(json_data)

Step 2: Create an internal stage in Snowflake In order to load data into Snowflake, we first need to create a stage. A stage is a storage location in Snowflake where data can be loaded from or unloaded to. We will create an internal stage, which is a stage that is managed by Snowflake.

To create an internal stage, we will use the CREATE STAGE command. Here is an example command to create an internal stage:

CREATE OR REPLACE STAGE xml_stage

Step 3: Copy the JSON file to the internal stage Once the stage is created, we can use the COPY INTO command to load data into it. We will copy the JSON file that we created in Step 1 to the internal stage

COPY INTO xml_stage FROM '@~/example.json'

Step 4: Create a file format for the JSON file Next, we need to create a file format that describes the JSON file. We will use the CREATE FILE FORMAT command to create a file format.

CREATE OR REPLACE FILE FORMAT json_format TYPE = 'JSON'

Step 5: Create a table to store the data Now that we have created a stage and loaded data into it, we can create a table to store the data in Snowflake. We will use the CREATE TABLE command to create the table.

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE xml_data ( id NUMBER, name VARCHAR(100), age NUMBER, city VARCHAR(100) ) 

Step 6: Copy the data from the stage to the table Finally, we can use the COPY INTO command to copy the data from the stage to the table. We will use the FILE_FORMAT option to specify the file format that we created in Step 4.

COPY INTO xml_data FROM ( SELECT $1:id, $1:name, $1:age, $1:city FROM @xml_stage/example.json ) FILE_FORMAT = json_format; 

That's it! We have successfully loaded an XML file into a Snowflake database. By converting the XML file to a JSON file and using the COPY INTO command, we were able to easily load the data into Snowflake.