[okfn-labs] Recline Data Explorer has local CSV file import support

Fri Mar 30 08:33:29 UTC 2012

Recline Data Explorer now has importing from CSV local file ([1])
using HTML5 file API:

http://okfnlabs.org/recline/demo/

Use it via via (newly introduced [2]) import menu at top right, for
example see this screenshot:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/okfn/7028889357/sizes/l/in/photostream/

I note several possible issues:

* Have not checked on performance with "large" files. For the record
my test usage was using fairly simple files like this (~40 items, 5k
items, and 200k items):

<http://thedatahub.org/dataset/search-engines-market-share/resource/9e86022d-ff6d-4a32-863f-813faf9fe1b8>
<http://thedatahub.org/dataset/iso-4217-currency-codes/resource/69ec48a5-4195-4439-92cf-d15096b9b20a>
<http://thedatahub.org/dataset/exchange-rates/resource/8847379e-c0f1-4f5b-8bed-129574cc823f>

Last of these hung in Chrome for around 5s but loaded fine.

* Have not checked how it performs with weird and wonderful encodings.
HTML5 File API appears to deliver utf8 by default but not sure whether
that helps or hinders. Would be interested in reports from people here
-- so if you've got a file with weird stuff please try it out and let
me know.

* NB: if you download and use recline locally the file import will not
work by default in chrome unless you serve recline from a local
webserver because of the well-known Chrome security restriction on
loading files from your local file system. FF works fine and you solve
it by running Recline from local webserver :-)

Rufus

[1]: https://github.com/okfn/recline/issues/39
[2]: https://github.com/okfn/recline/issues/36