mysql - is it possible to call a sql script from a stored procedure in another sql script?

Question

I'd like to use . to call sql script from inside a stored proc like so...

delimiter ///
create procedure append_procedure()
BEGIN
. test.sql;    
END; ///
delimiter ;

I'm getting a "failed to open 'test.sql;' " error when I run it this way. I've also tried ! but then I get a permission denied error. However, I can't eliminate the ; or the whole thing is broken. Is there a way around this?

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

There is a set of commands that are builtin to the mysql client. They're documented under "mysql Commands." These include DELIMITER, SOURCE, HELP, CONNECT, USE, QUIT, etc.

The . (or SOURCE) command is one of these builtins. You can't execute these builtin commands programmatically, nor from within a stored procedure.

It'd be like trying to run a UNIX shell builtin from a C program using execl().

A different analogy might be in a web browser, where you can type in special requests like "about:" that are handled by the browser app itself; these don't result in any HTTP request to a remote web site.

Also, it wouldn't help if you could source a script from within a stored procedure, because the script itself likely contains a bunch of commands that are mysql client builtins, and thus cannot be run by the stored proc.

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See also my answers to these related questions:

• Running MySQL *.sql files in PHP
• Loading .sql files from within PHP
• PHP: multiple SQL queries in one mysql_query statement