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Data Conversion
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Posted by Andy Brice
Dec 20, 2019 at 05:00 PM
I have been working on a data conversion tool. It’s not an outliner/PIM etc. But many CRIMPERs must face issues around data conversion as they move data from 1 product to another. So I thought it might be worth giving it a mention here, in case anyone is interested:
https://www.easydatatransform.com/
It is a desktop tool for Windows and Mac, so you don’t need to upload your confidential data to any third party servers.
Currently it can input and output Excel and delimited text files (e.g. CSV) and perform 36 different transformations. Hopefully, in the future I will add XML/JSON/SQLite and other formats that people ask for. Maybe even OPML. Although I have to think carefully about the best way to flatten and unflatten tree formats such as XML into a table and back again. Does anyone know any exising tools that do a good job of that?
It has a 7 (non-consecutive) days free trial. After that you have to purchase a subscription.
Happy to answer any questions.
Andy Brice
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 20, 2019 at 07:26 PM
Hi, we had briefly discussed this here:
https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/8606/15
But it definitely does deserve a thread of its own!
Aside a brief run at the time, I have not had the chance to try it with real data yet, but it seems to me that you’ve included additional transformations; looks good!
As noted in that thread, Flowheater is one (and the only) similar programme I am aware of. Re XML currently it can only handle flat files https://flowheater.net/en/documentation/adapter-xml
Interestingly, I currently need a transformation from/to JSON to/from SQL (but even a simple format like CSV will do) and have found nothing of the sort.
Posted by Andy Brice
Dec 20, 2019 at 07:39 PM
>Aside a brief run at the time, I have not had the chance to try it with
>real data yet, but it seems to me that you’ve included additional
>transformations; looks good!
There has been a lot of additional work and polishing since that previous post.
>As noted in that thread, Flowheater is one (and the only) similar
>programme I am aware of. Re XML currently it can only handle flat files
>https://flowheater.net/en/documentation/adapter-xml
It seems they can convert a CSV to XML, which is pretty straightforward. It is the conversion from XML (or JSON) to CSV that is tricky, especially if it has a deep tree.
I don’t know much about Flowheater, but it looks relatively complex. in Easy Data Transform we are trying to come up with something that anyone can get the hang of within a within a few minutes.
>Interestingly, I currently need a transformation from/to JSON to/from
>SQL (but even a simple format like CSV will do) and have found nothing
>of the sort.
I am hoping to tackle XML and JSON soon. But it depends what sort of feedback we get on v1.0.0.
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Dec 20, 2019 at 08:08 PM
Andy Brice wrote:
>I am hoping to tackle XML and JSON soon. But it depends what sort of feedback we get on v1.0.0.
Hi Andy,
If it helps, I’m using tools from Chilkat to do this in InfoQube and it is easy to use and very robust. Some, including XML and JSON, are actually free !
Check it out !
Pierre
Posted by Andy Brice
Dec 20, 2019 at 09:09 PM
>If it helps, I’m using tools from Chilkat to do this in InfoQube and it
>is easy to use and very robust. Some, including XML and JSON, are
>actually free !
>Check it out !
>
>https://www.chilkatsoft.com/
Thanks Pierre, I haven’t heard of that library before. Looks interesting. I am using the Qt library and that includes classes for XML and JSON parsing. So parsing isn’t too much of a problem. The issue it how to map what is essentially a tree into a table and then possibly back into a tree again at the end. I have some ideas, but I haven’t fully thought it through yet. One possibility is to preserve the tree structure in the column names.
Andy Brice