Only inserting specific rows from csv file into Sqlite3 database using python

Try converting the first item in row into a Python datetime.datetime object. If it works, process the line, if not, continue through the loop:

import datetime as DT
with open(file, 'rb') as csvfile:
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile, dialect='excel')
    for row in reader:
        try:
            date = DT.datetime.strptime(row[0], '%m/%d/%Y')
        except ValueError:
            continue 
    args = [logID] + row  
    sql = "INSERT INTO table VALUES ({})".format(', '.join(['?']*len(args)))
    cursor.execute(sql, args)

The above will work for small to moderate-sized CSV. If you have a huge CSV file, calling cursor.execute once per line can be slow. To improve the performance, read a chunk of (say, 1000) lines at a time, and accumulate the values to be inserted into a list of lists, manyargs. Then call

cursor.executemany("INSERT INTO table VALUES(?,?,?,?,?)", manyargs)

once per chunk.

By the way, constructing SQL commands with string formatting such as:

cursor.execute("INSERT INTO table VALUES(" +values+ ");")

can be a security risk. A maliciously constructed CSV file could take advantage of this line to run arbitrary SQL comands (see SQL injection and Little Bobby Tables). To protect against this, use parametrized SQL:

cursor.execute("INSERT INTO table VALUES(?,?,?,?,?)", args)

The ? is a placemarker -- one placemarker for each field value. The args is a sequence (such as a tuple or list) containing the values you wish to insert. Note that the args is passed as a second argument to cursor.execute. You do not have to convert the values in args to strings (though in this case, they are strings since csv.reader yields lists of strings). The sqlite3 module will handle the quoting of the arguments for you.