The features of CSV2MySQL are incredible:

• one single database configuration file to connect to your MySQL database
• reads and displays all available tables (and number of records in each) in your database and lets you select which table to upload to
• use the built-in file upload or FTP your CSV files directly to the server
• included sample .htaccess can increase your maximum file upload size in real time
• select field separator (comma, tab, or automated detection)
• select field enclosure (double quote, single quote or automated detection)
• select option of using first record as header fields in the CSV (or not)
• select option to allow duplicate records (or deny)
• select option to validate email addresses
• select option to purge existing records in your table (great for conversion)
• select option to delete CSV file after uploading processing
• excellent CSV field to Table field mapping ... very visual
• ability to save field mapping for later reuse
• include or exclude any field and map from/to any field

... and best of all it saves tons of time. Since we've been working with this utility for more than one year now, you also are assured that it works and is stable.

Another missing "must-have" was a script to transfer MySQL table fields to a CSV file ... again, there are utilities available, but most are as close to useless as possible. The only two functional methods that really work the way they are supposed to is the phpMyAdmin MySQL database manager's CSV export functionality (but that isn't very flexible, you can't choose which fields you want) - or writing a script for each MySQL to CSV process you need.

Since we needed to use MySQL essentially to sanitize and clean data, it meant that getting the data out of MySQL became a regular task. We chose to write our own ... and the result simply awes us each time we use it. The features of MySQL2CSV are:

• one single database configuration file to connect to your MySQL database
• reads and displays all available tables (and number of records in each) in your database and lets you select which table to download from
• excellent Table field selector ... very visual
• include or exclude any field
• select any single field as DISTINCT (eliminates duplicates on a key field)
• choose whether to exclude a record if a particular field is empty (like email address)
• choose to do case conversion on the field (like strtoupper() or (strtolower())
• choose to do field conversion (like ucwords() or any other single PHP function)
• select field separator (comma, or tab)
• select field enclosure (double quote, single quote, or none)
• CSV created includes header fields as the first record in the CSV
• select file name to export as
• include a Query to pre-process (before the selection of the records for output to CSV file)
• include a Query to process the selection of the records for output to CSV file (can be useful if the records returned aren't quite what you expected)
• select option to purge existing records in your table after exporting to CSV