A difference between Import (CSV) and Entry

[kzorith]

Greetings,

Another interesting item that perhaps I’m doing wrong but thought I’d bring up for discussion.

I have a database of movies. The top three fields are Series, Movie Name and Order. They are all text. They are also sorted in this order.

I imported a number of records using CSV and the first group of movies have nothing in the Series or Order fields. So the CSV record was “”,”2012″,””

The system displays the top two rows of the record in the list in this case it shows 2012 and a blank line. So far so good.

Next, I enter a record into the form manually. I don’t go into the Series field, I enter Kill Bill in the Movie Name field and don’t go into the Order field. Then I save the record.

Now the expected result is that I’d have two records in the form 2012 first with a blank line, and then Kill Bill second with a blank line.

What I get is a blank line with Kill Bill second, followed by 2012 with a blank line. This indicates to me that what ever is filled in the Series and Order fields in the manual record is of higher ordinal value in the sort then the Imported record.

Shouldn’t they be the same because I didn’t enter anything in the Series or Order fields? I can force the records into the proper order if I go into the manual record, enter a character in the Series field, delete it out, enter a character in the Order field, delete it out and then save the record. Then it all sorts the way it should.

Am I hitting an issue or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance,

Kzorith

[Brendan]

Hello Kzorith,

Can you send me a sample file and some screenshots demonstrating the problem?

Thanks,

Brendan

[kzorith]

Greetings,

I could put together a sample file for the CSV and detail how to recreate the problem, but I’m not sure how I’d send screen captures of my iPod Touch to you. I could use a camera and take pictures I guess. Would that work?

Kzorith

[Brendan]

Hello Kzorith,

The magic function to take a screenshot of the screen is to press the home button and the power button at the same time.

Then you’ll have the photos in your album. You can email them to me from there.

Thanks!

Brendan

[kzorith]

Greetings Brendan,

Learn something new every day. I didn’t know about that function of the iPod.

I have sent the file to support@tapforms.com. Assuming it doesn’t get filtered or blocked, it should be there by now.

Kzorith

[RampantBadger]

New here (still researching the use of this program), but I saw this thread while reading through the forum. I’m not sure if a solution has been implemented yet,but from your description it sounds like the blank (“”) versus NULL issue. When you imported your data from the CSV file, the db inserted the blank fields “” into that column. However, when you added records by hand, and no entry was made into that field, the database left the value as NULL, which is different and accounts for the sort difference, e.g.

sqlite> create table test2 (a text, b text);

sqlite> insert into test2 (a,b) values(NULL, “Test 1”);

sqlite> insert into test2 (a,b) values(“”, “Test 2”);

sqlite> insert into test2 (a,b) values(NULL, “Test 3”);

sqlite> insert into test2 (a,b) values(“”, “Test 4”);

sqlite> select * from test2;

|Test 1

|Test 2

|Test 3

|Test 4

sqlite> select * from test2 order by a;

|Test 1

|Test 3

|Test 2

|Test 4

Keep up the good work!

[kzorith]

That is indeed the issue, but I’m not sure if it’s been corrected either. I’ve not tried to do imports for a few months against the new versions.

Kzorith

[Brendan]

Hi Kzorith,

Does this still happen with the 2.0 update?

Thanks,

Brendan

[kzorith]

Greetings Brendan,

I’m sorry I didn’t respond to this in a timely fashion as I haven’t been doing much entry into my database on Tap Forms.

I haven’t done any imports into that one database but I have noted that when I entered in a new record leaving Series and Order empty and filling in Movie Name, the records come to the top of the list even if they are not alphabetically first. When I go in and put in a character in the Series and Order fields, then delete the character out and save the record, the record goes to where it is supposed to be in the list.

So while it may or may not be behaving this way on a CSV import, it is still behaving incorrectly on a record entry.

Kzorith

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