[ckan-discuss] lowercase file formats

[Rufus Pollock]

On 16 March 2012 11:36, David Read <david.read at hackneyworkshop.com> wrote:
> I notice that file formats are now automatically changed to lower
> case, whatever you type in. I can see this is useful to stop the
> database ending up with both 'CSV' and 'csv', but I think capitals are
> often important. e.g. our database has RDFa, iCal, netCDF, Flash
> Player and having this hard-coded in the logic layer is a rather
> inflexible. And what if on our site we'd prefer CSV to csv? Also, it
> doesn't seem right to do this conversion without telling you *after*
> you submit the form.

Got you. I guess the issue is you end up with a lot CSV vs csv in the
DB. What about netCDF versus netcdf or Flash versus flash. At least
for faceting it is clear we need to standardize. So options are:

* Don't change the format you are given (but then standardize into the
faceting in SOLR?)
* Change stuff to lower case (not liked but standardized)

> How about just having format autocomplete with some well-known
> formats, or convert only well-known formats (e.g. csv, xls) to
> lower/uppercase, rather than the whole lot?

Autocomplete just runs off whole list of existing formats at the
moment. Autocompleting based on specific formats would add more
complexity (so if you wanted that change we might want to remove full
autocomplete).

Sounds like this is all ticketable and real questoin is then cost /
benefit of this versus other features :-)

rufus

> Dave
>
> commit da3edd4371e381c2a631578938e878a2cf612bd9
> Author: Tom Rees <zephod at gmail.com>
> Date:   Tue Feb 28 18:26:31 2012 +0000
>
>    [#1506]: Force format field to be lowercase in resources.
>
> diff --git a/ckan/lib/dictization/model_dictize.py b/ckan/lib/dictization/model_
> index 309350e..1e1475e 100644
> --- a/ckan/lib/dictization/model_dictize.py
> +++ b/ckan/lib/dictization/model_dictize.py
> @@ -79,6 +79,7 @@ def extras_list_dictize(extras_list, context):
>
>  def resource_dictize(res, context):
>     resource = table_dictize(res, context)
> +    resource['format'] = resource.get('format','').lower()
>     extras = resource.pop("extras", None)
>     if extras:
>         resource.update(extras)
>
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