CSV

Overview

CSV stands for comma separated values. It is a plain text format commonly used for serialization of tabular data. It is specified in RFC 4180. CSV provides a simple way to get tabular data into other applications such as Excel.

CSV is represented by the def filetype:csv.

Grid Format

Haystack defines a standard mapping of grids into CSV, which is used by the HTTP API. Due to its simplicity, CSV does not provide full fidelity with the Haystack grid model -- metadata and type information is discarded.

The Grid to CSV mapping is as follows:

• First row is the column display names (programmatic names and meta is discarded)
• Subsequent rows map to rows from the Grid
• Marker cells are encoded as the Unicode checkmark code point U+2713
• Null cells are encoded as the empty string
• Ref cells are encoded as "@id dis", for example "@3ef7 Site-1"
• Bools are encoded as "true" or "false"
• Strs and Uris are encoded using their unescaped value
• Everything else is encoded using its Zinc encoding

Example:

// Zinc
ver:"3.0" projName:"test"
dis "Equip Name",equip,siteRef,installed
"RTU-1",M,@153c600e-699a1886 "HQ",2005-06-01
"RTU-2",M,@153c600e-699a1886 "HQ",1999-07-12

// CSV
Equip Name,equip,siteRef,installed
RTU-1,✓,@153c600e-699a1886 HQ,2005-06-01
RTU-2,✓,@153c600e-699a1886 HQ,1999-07-12