include a variable in an OCI8 insert statement

Question

I'm having a hard time using variables in my oci8 insert statement.

CSV.foreach('C:/csv_test.csv') do |row|
gender = row[0]
name = row[1]
year = row[2]
command = 'INSERT INTO CSV_TEST VALUES('+gender+','+name+','+year+')'
conn.exec(command)
end

i made sure that everything works fine. Gender, name and year contain my data and the insert works just fine. But i can't call the gender, name and year variables in my insert statement. The error I'm receiving is:

column not allowed here

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The safest way to do this is using bindvariables. This will eliminate any escaping bugs and security flaws.

Oracle has a decent ruby tutorial for working with ruby. Unfortunately I don't have Oracle installed, so I can't test this this. I'm guessing the following will work though:

cursor = conn.parse('INSERT INTO CSV_TEST VALUES(:gender,:name,:year)')
cursor.bind_param(1,String)
cursor.bind_param(2,String)
cursor.bind_param(3,Fixnum) 
CSV.foreach('C:/csv_test.csv') do |row|
    gender = row[0]
    name = row[1]
    year = row[2]
    cursor[1] = gender
    cursor[2] = name
    cursor[3] = year.to_i
    cursor.exec  
end