Using OS X Version – CSV Import

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  • August 24, 2013 at 1:16 PM #6521

    Yogie
    Participant

    Hi Brendan,

    I switched from Bento to Tap Forms.

    I exported a Bento table to CSV in the table I do have a currency column and also date and date & time columns.

    When I import the CSV the dates never get imported and the currency values do not have the amount after the decimal point.

    I have set the date form to look exactly as the example records that are showing up at the import dialog.

    I also tried to set up a Tap Forms form prior importing to have the column types the imported data is having but also this is not going to work.

    Cheers
    Yogie

    August 24, 2013 at 2:09 PM #6522

    Yogie
    Participant

    Hi Brendan,

    I think I identified the problem …

    for the date field I didn’t need the time stamp, so I went into my CSV and deleted the T12:12:12 part so I simply had 2013-01-01 left for the date and then the import worked.

    For the currency I simply deleted the currency symbol out of the CSV but as I’m in Germany the format of the numbers are different. We use 1.123,00 so again I used grep in Textwrangler and replaces my currency to look 1,123.00 and then the import brought the right results. So at the end from 1.123,00 € I changed it to look like 1,123.00 instead.

    Is there a way you can fix such issues so that we do not need to edit a CSV prior importing?

    Cheers
    Yogie

    August 24, 2013 at 11:43 PM #6525

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Hello Yogie,

    Thanks for the feedback. What you did is correct. Sometimes it just takes a little massaging of the data to make it import correctly. But I agree it would be better to have more options on importing for dealing with these kind of issues.

    Thanks,

    Brendan

    August 25, 2013 at 12:47 AM #6528

    Yogie
    Participant

    Thank you Brendan!

    I was just lucky enough that I did not need to have the times in my date field. Because although I have had the format for the date set to 2013-01-01T12:12:12 for importing dates into Tap Forms I was not able to import the dates from my CSV all three columns were left empty. But I bet this was because I had three date columns. Two were having times and one was just having a date. Anyhow if I would have to rely on the times in two columns I would have been in trouble to import the data. So there is room for improvement ;)

    Many thanks again!
    Cheers
    Yogie

    August 25, 2013 at 11:27 AM #6535

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Yes, it seems that the proper way to handle this would be to have a different date formatter available for each field. The same with number formatters.

    August 25, 2013 at 6:41 PM #6549

    johnmcboston
    Participant

    Former Bento convert here as well.

    Although all my my databases are already imported – on the Import window, it would be nice if you could chose which fields to import or not import. Perhaps a future feature.

    thanks

    – J

    (btw – great YT videos – helped me a lot)

    August 28, 2013 at 8:59 PM #6562

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Thanks John. I’ll pass that along to my son who created them for me.

    Thanks!

    Brendan

    August 30, 2013 at 6:28 PM #6573

    tambor
    Participant

    hi,
    i also to need to import exported CSV tables from Bento.
    on a previous post on this thread, Yogie wrote:
    “again I used grep in Textwrangler and replaces my currency to look 1,123.00 and then the import brought the right results. So at the end from 1.123,00 € I changed it to look like 1,123.00 instead”

    i may need to change date and currencies formats too. but i’ve no idea what “grep” is.
    i know TextWrangler though…
    please let me know.

    thanks

    August 30, 2013 at 10:53 PM #6576

    Yogie
    Participant

    Hi Tambor,

    I used the grep within the search and replace of TextWrangler to search a comma in numbers to let it replace by a period. Her is a link where I found how to use the grep expression: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/901976

    Hope this helps!

    Cheers Yogie

    September 2, 2013 at 4:59 PM #6582

    tambor
    Participant

    Hi Yogie!

    Thanks for the very useful explanation and link.

    I had no idea on how to use this grep feature for searching in TextWrangler. Seems very powerful indeed.

    Have a nice day.

    September 2, 2013 at 8:45 PM #6583

    Yogie
    Participant

    tambor,

    I had trouble to make the grep expressions work in TextWrangler but this is what I did:

    at the search box

    (\d+)\.(\d+)\,(\d+)

    at the replace box

    \1,\2.\3

    As an example this grep expression would find any number in this format

    1.123,34

    and re-format it to

    1,123.34

    I also used a grep expression to re-format my date & time fields (I simply cut off the times as I could not make these to get imported).

    Cheers
    Yogie

    September 3, 2013 at 5:10 AM #6588

    tambor
    Participant

    Hi again Yogie,

    Thanks very much for pointing this out. It’ll probably save me a lot of time. I take good note of it for further reference.

    Cheers,

    September 4, 2013 at 8:57 AM #6595

    Brendan
    Keymaster

    Tap Forms will use the Date Format and the Time Format specified with a space character in between to import Date & Time fields. Bento puts the letter T between the Date and the Time. Just replace the T with a space character in your CSV file and it should import.

    September 4, 2013 at 10:21 AM #6598

    tambor
    Participant

    Thanks Brendan

    That’s very useful indeed.
    Thanks for your help :D

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