copy_to.src_sql: Copy a local data frame to a remote database

In dbplyr: A 'dplyr' Back End for Databases

Copy a local data frame to a remote database

Description

This is an implementation of the dplyr dplyr::copy_to() generic and it mostly a wrapper around DBI::dbWriteTable().

It is useful for copying small amounts of data to a database for examples, experiments, and joins. By default, it creates temporary tables which are only visible within the current connection to the database.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'src_sql'
copy_to(
  dest,
  df,
  name = deparse(substitute(df)),
  overwrite = FALSE,
  types = NULL,
  temporary = TRUE,
  unique_indexes = NULL,
  indexes = NULL,
  analyze = TRUE,
  ...,
  in_transaction = TRUE
)

Arguments

dest	remote data source
df	A local data frame, a tbl_sql from same source, or a tbl_sql from another source. If from another source, all data must transition through R in one pass, so it is only suitable for transferring small amounts of data.
name	Name of new remote table. Use a string to create the table in the current catalog/schema. Use I() if you want to create it in a specific catalog/schema, e.g. I("schema.table").
overwrite	If TRUE, will overwrite an existing table with name name. If FALSE, will throw an error if name already exists.
types	a character vector giving variable types to use for the columns. See https://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html for available types.
temporary	if TRUE, will create a temporary table that is local to this connection and will be automatically deleted when the connection expires
unique_indexes	a list of character vectors. Each element of the list will create a new unique index over the specified column(s). Duplicate rows will result in failure.
indexes	a list of character vectors. Each element of the list will create a new index.
analyze	if TRUE (the default), will automatically ANALYZE the new table so that the query optimiser has useful information.
...	other parameters passed to methods.
in_transaction	Should the table creation be wrapped in a transaction? This typically makes things faster, but you may want to suppress if the database doesn't support transactions, or you're wrapping in a transaction higher up (and your database doesn't support nested transactions.)

Value

Another tbl_lazy. Use dplyr::show_query() to see the generated query, and use collect() to execute the query and return data to R.

See Also

copy_inline() to use small data in an SQL query without actually writing to a table.

Examples

library(dplyr, warn.conflicts = FALSE)

df <- data.frame(x = 1:5, y = letters[5:1])
db <- copy_to(src_memdb(), df)
db

df2 <- data.frame(y = c("a", "d"), fruit = c("apple", "date"))
# copy_to() is called automatically if you set copy = TRUE
# in the join functions
db %>% left_join(df2, copy = TRUE)

dbplyr documentation built on Sept. 10, 2025, 10:29 a.m.