Once you have downloaded the compressed database, extract the file worldcitiespop.txt and invoke the MySQL client (preferably from the same directory where the worldcitiespop.txt file resides).

Create the world database and the cities table

Here is the structure for the world database (remove the first two lines if you already have a database):

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-- Database: `world`
CREATE DATABASE `world`;
USE `world`;
 
-- Table: `cities`
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `cities` (
  `Country` CHAR(2) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
  `City` VARCHAR(100) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
  `AccentCity` VARCHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
  `Region` CHAR(2) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
  `Population` INT(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
  `Latitude` FLOAT NOT NULL,
  `Longitude` FLOAT NOT NULL,
  KEY `AccentCity` (`AccentCity`(5)),
  KEY `City` (`City`(5))
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

Import cities from worldcitiespop.txt into database

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LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE _path_to_file_
  INTO TABLE `cities`
  FIELDS
    TERMINATED BY ','
  LINES
    TERMINATED BY '\n'
  IGNORE 1 LINES;

_path_the_file_ can be either an absolute path or relative path (relative to the folder from where you invoked the MySQL client), so in case you followed my instructions and invoked the MySQL client from the directory that contains the file worldcitiespop.txt, _path_to_file_ will be worldcitiespop.txt.

The file worldcitiespop.txt is as big as 130 MB so the process may take very much longer than a few seconds

What’s next? up to you…

Now that the database is installed you can use it for your application, I use it on one of my websites where users can choose one or more cities on their profiles, then they get a daily weather forecast for those cities.

mysql > SELECT * FROM wp_links;
mysql > SELECT * FROM wp_links\g

Those are exactly the same, and will produce the same result, here is an example:

mysql> select * from wp_links \g
+---------+-----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+---------------+------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+---------------------+----------+------------+-----------------------+
| link_id | link_url | link_name | link_image | link_target | link_category | link_description | link_visible | link_owner | link_rating | link_updated | link_rel | link_notes | link_rss |
+---------+-----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+---------------+------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+---------------------+----------+------------+-----------------------+
| 1 | http://www.ar-wp.com/ | WP arabic | | | 0 | | Y | 1 | 0 | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 | | | http://www.ar-wp.com/ |
+---------+-----------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+---------------+------------------+--------------+------------+-------------+---------------------+----------+------------+-----------------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)


\G is another valid statement terminator, it tells MySQL to produce vertical output, this comes in handy when the result has too much columns, here is the same statement again but with the \G terminator:

mysql> select * from wp_links\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
link_id: 1
link_url: http://www.ar-wp.com/
link_name: WP arabic
link_image:
link_target:
link_category: 0
link_description:
link_visible: Y
link_owner: 1
link_rating: 0
link_updated: 0000-00-00 00:00:00
link_rel:
link_notes:
link_rss: http://www.ar-wp.com/
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

As you can see this is a more user friendly fashion for displaying data.

A MySQL script file (aka MySQL batch file) is a regular text file containing MySQL statements separeted by terminantors, statements in a MySQL script file can be run from the MySQL client, this is very useful, many PHP script available online come with MySQL script files that need to be run as part of the PHP script installation process, when you have PHPMyAdmin (or some other tool) available, you can copy the contents of the MySQL script file then paste those statements into PHPMyAdmin and run the SQL queries, this works fine on local servers and/or for small MySQL script files, but if you have 20000 MySQL queries (maybe you are trying to restore your forum database), using copy/paste and PHPMyAdmin is a very bad idea.

Run MySQL script files from MySQL client

You can run MySQL script files from the MySQL client like this

mysql> SOURCE path_to_script_file;

or

mysql> \. path_to_script_file;

path_to_script_file is an absolute or relative path (relative to the directory from which you invoked the MySQL client), examples:

mysql> SOURCE queries.sql;
mysql> SOURCE ./../sql/queries.sql;
mysql> SOURCE C:\wamp\sql\queries.sql;

– exactly the same as :

mysql> \. queries.sql;
mysql> \. ./../sql/queries.sql;
mysql> \. C:\wamp\sql\queries.sql;

Run MySQL script files from the shell

You can execute a MySQL script file directly from the shell with the mysql command like this:


shell> mysql database_name < path_to_script_file
or
shell> mysql -f database_name < path_to_script_file
or
shell> mysql --force database_name < path_to_script_file


The -f (or –force) option tells mysql to continue the execution of upcoming queries even if it encounters errors, some examples:


shell> mysql database_name < script.sql
shell> mysql -f database_name < ../sql/script_with_errors.sql