CSV text files

FrePPLe can import CSV-formatted files from a configurable data directory. And frePPLe can export its planning results in a set of CSV-formatted files as well.

The files are all placed in a folder that is configurable with the UPLOADFILEFOLDER in the djangosettings.py configuration file. The log files importfromfolder.log and exporttofolder.log record all data imports and file exports, together with any data errors identified during their processing.

The data files to be imported must meet the following criteria:

• The file name must start with the name of the data object they store.

  The file name must end with the extension .csv or or .csv.gz. Files with the extension .csv.gz are expected to compressed in gzip format.

  Some examples of valid file names are item.csv.gz, item.csv, demand.csv, demand.part1.csv

• The first line of the file should contain the field names

• The file should be in CSV format. The delimiter depends on the default language (configured with LANGUAGE_CODE in djangosettings.py). For english-speaking countries it’s a comma. For European countries it’s a semicolon.

• The file should be encoded in UTF-8 (configurable with the CSV_CHARSET setting in djangosettings.py)

The export can be customized, i.e. export only the relevant data and with the a specific format (file names, dates, separators, …). The customization is done by copying the exporttofolder.py file and updating the SQL statements it contains.

The export and import can be run in 2 ways:

• In the user interface a user can interactively launch the task in the execution screen.

• You can run the task from the command line using the frepplectl utility.

  frepplectl exporttofolder
  
  frepplectl importfromfolder