FiveM: SQL file import
Introduction
Many resources for FiveM will require a database to function correctly. Therefore, it is important that you import the SQL files provided with your resources correctly into your database to ensure that the resources can create entries into your database and function as expected.
Not all resources require a database to function! When you download a resource, check the description or documentation to figure out whether you need to import an SQL file.
In many cases, one or more files with the file extension .sql will be enclosed within the download files for the resource. These must be imported into the database.
Preparation of your database
To begin, you must access the Settings section on your gameserver webinterface.
You must active the Configure database section. By default, this should be enabled. However, check this by scrolling down, finding the correct subsection and setting this to Yes, configure automatically! if it's not set yet. Now scroll to the bottom of the page and ensure that you press the Save button.
Ensure that you scroll to the bottom of the page and press the Save button, otherwise your changes might not be saved.
Now, you must navigate to the Resources section on your gameserver webinterface. Here, you must install the MySQL-Async resource if it's not installed yet. This must be installed in order to allow the server to communicate with your database.
You have now configured your database to work with your gameserver and it is ready to be used.
Preparing the SQL file
In this example, we will be importing the SQL file for ESX. You should prepare the SQL file for the resource that you want to import it for. You can do this by opening the folder of your resource which requires a database and finding a file with the .sql file extension.
Before proceeding with the import, you should open the .sql file with any text editor and check if the following lines are present:
If this exists within your .sql file, ensure to remove the CREATE and USE database lines and save the file, otherwise the SQL file cannot be imported.
This is because the first line declares that a new database should be created, but you do not need this as your RedM gameserver already has a database with another name. The second line declares that the database with the name essentialmode should be used to import into, but once again you do not need this as there is an existing database that you will use for importing.
Import the SQL file into your database
You should now access the Database section on your gameserver webinterface.
On the database page, you will be provided with a range of different functions to manage your database including the options to backup, create, manage and more. We will focus on accessing your database, however take a look at our other database guides if you want more information: Setting up external DB access.
You should press the blue redirect icon which will take you to the tool phpmyadmin where you can easily access your database. Login with the credentials that were provided on the database page if you are prompted.
Once you are on the page, select your database from the list on the left. The name of your database will always start with zap as the prefix.
At the moment, your database will be empty if you have not used it before. Now you will finally import the .sql file.
Press the Import button on the top navigation bar on your phpmyadmin to open up the import menu.
Next, you should press the Browse... button which will open up a file explorer window. Select the .sql file that you originally wanted to import.
The maximum file size is 2MB. If you have a larger SQL file than this, you should use a SQL splitter to split a large SQL file into smaller parts. We recommend the tool Pinetools SQL-Splitter which does this for you. Once done, you can import the SQL files as normal.
Finally, press the Import button at the bottom of the page to start the import process. If everything worked correctly, you will see a success message and a new table will be created within your database which you can view on the left-hand side.
You have successfully imported an SQL file to your gameserver's database!