How to Save MySQL query results into a text or CSV file in your local machine

MySQL provides an easy mechanism for writing the results of a select statement into a text file on the server. Using extended options of the INTO OUTFILE nomenclature, it is possible to create a comma separated value (CSV) which can be imported into a spreadsheet application such as OpenOffice or Excel or any other application which accepts data in CSV format.

In your terminal

Given a query such as

SELECT * FROM pet;

which returns all columns of data, the results can be placed into the file /tmp/pet.txt using the query:

SELECT * FROM pet
INTO OUTFILE ‘/tmp/pet.txt’

This will create a tab-separated file, each row on its own line. To alter this behavior, it is possible to add modifiers to the query:

SELECT * FROM pet
INTO OUTFILE ‘/tmp/pet.csv’
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ‘,’
LINES TERMINATED BY ‘\n’

In this example,the fields will be separated by commas, and each row will be output on a new line separated by a newline (\n). Sample output of this command would look like:

Fluffy,Harold,cat,f,1993-02-04,0000-00-00
Claws,Gwen,cat,m,1994-03-17,0000-00-00