Question: I have about 14000 rows of comma separated values that I am trying to insert into a sqlite table using PHP PDO, like so:

```
<?php
// create a PDO object
$dbh = new PDO('sqlite:mydb.sdb');

$lines = file('/csv/file.txt'); // import lines as array
foreach ($lines as $line) {
    $line_array = (','$line); // create an array of comma-separated values in each line
    $values = '';
    foreach ($line_array as $l) {
        $values .= "'$l', ";
    }
    substr($values,-2,0); // get rid of the last comma and whitespace
    $query = "insert into sqlite_table values ($values)"; // plug the value into a query statement
    $dbh->query($query); // run the query
}

?>

```

This query takes a long time, and to run it without interuption, I would have to use PHP-CLI. 
Is there a better (faster) way to do this?

Answer: 
You will see a good performance gain by wrapping your inserts in a single transaction. If you don't do this SQLite treats each insert as its own transaction.

```
<?php
// create a PDO object
$dbh = new PDO('sqlite:mydb.sdb');

// Start transaction
$dbh->beginTransaction();
$lines = file('/csv/file.txt'); // import lines as array
foreach ($lines as $line) {
    $line_array = (','$line); // create an array of comma-separated values in each line
    $values = '';
    foreach ($line_array as $l) {
        $values .= "'$l', ";
    }
    substr($values,-2,0); // get rid of the last comma and whitespace
    $query = "insert into sqlite_table values ($values)"; // plug the value into a query statement
    $dbh->query($query); // run the query
}
// commit transaction
$dbh->commit();

?>

```
Start a transaction before the loop and commit it after the loop  

the way your code is working now, it starts a transaction on every insert