How to Execute SQL Script File in Java?

There is no portable way of doing that. You can execute a native client as an external program to do that though:

import java.io.*;
public class CmdExec {

  public static void main(String argv[]) {
    try {
      String line;
      Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec
        ("psql -U username -d dbname -h serverhost -f scripfile.sql");
      BufferedReader input =
        new BufferedReader
          (new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
      while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
      }
      input.close();
    }
    catch (Exception err) {
      err.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}
  • Code sample was extracted from here and modified to answer question assuming that the user wants to execute a PostgreSQL script file.

Flyway library is really good for this:

    Flyway flyway = new Flyway();
    flyway.setDataSource(dbConfig.getUrl(), dbConfig.getUsername(), dbConfig.getPassword());
    flyway.setLocations("classpath:db/scripts");
    flyway.clean();
    flyway.migrate();

This scans the locations for scripts and runs them in order. Scripts can be versioned with V01__name.sql so if just the migrate is called then only those not already run will be run. Uses a table called 'schema_version' to keep track of things. But can do other things too, see the docs: flyway.

The clean call isn't required, but useful to start from a clean DB. Also, be aware of the location (default is "classpath:db/migration"), there is no space after the ':', that one caught me out.


There is great way of executing SQL scripts from Java without reading them yourself as long as you don't mind having a dependency on Ant. In my opinion such a dependency is very well justified in your case. Here is sample code, where SQLExec class lives in ant.jar:

private void executeSql(String sqlFilePath) {
    final class SqlExecuter extends SQLExec {
        public SqlExecuter() {
            Project project = new Project();
            project.init();
            setProject(project);
            setTaskType("sql");
            setTaskName("sql");
        }
    }

    SqlExecuter executer = new SqlExecuter();
    executer.setSrc(new File(sqlFilePath));
    executer.setDriver(args.getDriver());
    executer.setPassword(args.getPwd());
    executer.setUserid(args.getUser());
    executer.setUrl(args.getUrl());
    executer.execute();
}