PostGIS: unable to import GeoJSON data (selected attributes) to PostgreSQL database using ogr2ogr

Question

I downloaded sample OSM data of my area of interest via Overpass-turbo as my_map.geojson. I am trying to import this geojson file to my PostgreSQL 10 (Windows 8 x64 machine) database using ogr2ogr (QGIS OSGeo CMD tool). The following command imports entire my_map.geojson without errors.

ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL PG:"host=localhost user=my_user dbname=my_db password=my_pw" -lco GEOMETRY_NAME=the_geom -lco FID=gid -nln my_tbl path_to_my_map.geojson

However, when I try to import selected attributes using following command:

ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL PG:"host=localhost user=my_user dbname=my_db password=my_pw" -select 'name,highway,oneway,surface' -lco GEOMETRY_NAME=the_geom -lco FID=gid -nln my_tbl path_to_my_map.geojson

I get the error:

ERROR 1: Field ''name' not found in source layer.
ERROR 1: Terminating translation prematurely after failed
translation of layer map (use -skipfailures to skip errors)

Any idea why -select flag of ogr2ogr throws error?

Update:

The output of:

ogrinfo -al -so path_to_my_map.geojson

is,

Layer name: my_map
Geometry: Unknown (any)
Feature Count: 28
..
..
id: String (0.0)
@id: String (0.0)
highway: String (0.0)
name: String (0.0)
surface: String (0.0)

• user30184: Which fields GDAL finds with ogrinfo -al -so path_to_my_map.geojson?
• khajlk: Just updated the question with the output of above command, thank you.
• geozelot: don't enclose the column list with '
• khajlk: Care to post your comment as solution? it worked :)

Answer 1

Parameters passed to ogr2ogr flags are themselves parsed as string literals (and/or parsed to numeric types if needed); they don't require string enclosing (' or "), rather, consider them always getting enclosed implicitly.

To explain the behavior:

• -select col1, col2 implicitly translates to "col1", "col2"
  • thus -select 'col1', 'col2' will translate to "'col1'", "'col2'"
    or -select 'col1, col2' to "'col1", "col2'", as in your case
  • non-standard column names, however, need string enclosing, just as referring to them in a SQL client would: -select "c0l!", col2

Notes:

• flags like -sql expect an arbitrary query string as parameter to be passed and interpreted to the SQL backend; thus you need to pass the parameter with string enclosing
  • -sql "SELECT * FROM my_table"
• in e.g. the -where flag you need to add string enclosing if you want to filter e.g. a text column, like -where name='Peter', but -where number=1