Imports and exports¶
Note
Attention: the import procedure is about to change in the next version of DDI on Rails.
New import design (DDI on Rails 2)¶
The new imports are closely tied to the data model. Many “additional functionality” was removed, e.g., the link between logical variables and question items is now in an independent import; and is no longer part of either the logical variables import or the questions import.
Import formats¶
CSV formats¶
- Markdown
- In most imports, there is a
description
field using Markdown. For more information about the Markdown markup language, see: Daring Fireball. - Conventions
Some fields in the CSV exports are not part of the import. Those fields start with
view_
variables
anddatasets
.Columns with the
internal_
prefix are indended for internal use only and will not be imported (e.g.internal_comment
).Language codes, for all translation purposes: ISO 639-1
XML formats¶
- Endnote
- Publications in Endnote’s XML export.
- r2ddi
- DDI-Codebook-based XML, generated by r2ddi.
- QeDML
- QeDML-XML from QLIB.
Other formats¶
- Endnote keys
- Endnote keys are a special import of two columns (accession number and keywords) in addition to the normal XML import. Endnote exports everything but the keywords to XML what makes this import neccessary.
Conventions¶
- Name identifiers: all names are set to lower case during import. This means that names must be unique despite their capitalization. Furthermore, only a limited set of characters is allowed in names: letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), dash (-), and underscore (_).
Import structure¶
Top level¶
import/
|-- system/ # -> system-wide imports
|-- study-first/ # \
|-- study-second/ # }-> one folder per study
|-- study-third/ # /
All levels¶
ddionrails/
|-- study.md
|-- variables.csv
|-- ...all other csv files...
|-- datasets/
| |-- version/
| | |-- ...dataset descriptions in DDI-C-XML...
|-- files/
| |-- ...all files for public folder...
|-- instruments/
|-- qedml/
| |-- ...questionnaires in QeDML-XML-format...
|-- topics/