Export Formats for Downloading Data

Once a dataset has been loaded into Data & Insights, it is available for download in a number of different formats:

  • CSV (Comma Separated Values)
  • CSV for Excel (Tab Separated Values)
  • CSV for Excel (Europe)*
  • RDF
  • RSS** (with GeoRSS information if there is a Location column in the dataset)
  • TSV for Excel 
  • XML

*Note for international customers: The CSV for Excel (Europe) file will:

  • Have semicolon separators
  • Preserve any date and number formats that have been specified in the column settings for that dataset
  • Contain the BOM character needed in CSV files in order for Excel to read the file and special characters properly

**RSS feeds are restricted to a maximum of 50-row updates.

If the dataset contains Geospatial information (Point, Line, Polygon, etc.), the dataset will have additional output formats*:

  • KML
  • KMZ
  • Shapefile**
  • Original
  • GeoJSON

*Note that exporting geospatial files containing multipolygons using the CSV button will export the data in Well Known Text format. Opening these text files in Excel may result in the text wrapping to the next line if the multipolygon string exceeds the cell character limit. If this happens, open the file with a powerful text editor.

*Exporting geospatial file types will have a max size limitation of 25 gigabytes. For exporting map data that is larger than the limit please export in a flat file format like CSV. 

**Shapefiles have a field name limit of 10 characters. Also, floating timestamp columns get turned into 2 columns, a date column and a time column, because shapefiles can't store date and time data in the same column. These limitations could cause field names to be different than what is on the platform.

Downloading a dataset can be done from the primer page. Select the Export button in the upper right corner, then choose a format from the Export dataset window.

export data options dropdown

Ordering and Filtering Downloads

When exporting the file simply by clicking the Export button on the primer page, we cannot affect the order of rows in the exported file. However,  all of the above formats can present the data in filtered, ordered, or even queried downloads via the Data & Insights Open Data Consumer API. This API is useful for developers too.

 



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3 comments
  • Regarding the RDF export, I see a default export exists already, now I've made a quick test table and a couple of test rows.

    However I have seen examples - eg opendata.socrata.com/dataset/My-Friends-RDF-Test-/w7f6-86zj - where the RDF is nicely tuned to external / well known RDF schemas. I don't see where this is configured yet, ... can it be done through the Web UI?

     

    ps. you export "Web links" using a property foaf:document that doesn't exist in FOAF; that could do with tweaking somehow

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  • Dan -

    The default RDF output isn't super useful since datasets we need more semantics in order to describe the data. You'll want to configure the column to include the semantic type. If you bring up the Column Properties sidebar by clicking on the orange drop-down button in the column header, you can select the predicate you want to use from the "Advanced" section. That'll then be used to describe the data in the RDF output.

    Note that you need to be the owner of the dataset in order to modify the column properties, so you should try this on a dataset you've created yourself.

    Feel free to let me know if you have more questions.

    Thanks,

    Chris Metcalf

    Director of Product Development

    and Developer Evangelism

    chris.metcalf (at) socrata.com

     

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  • Hi Chris!

    My question is somewhat related to Dan's; looking for...

    • Detail on how the "raw" RDF conversion is done
    • Detail on binding predicates to columns, especially adding candidate vocabularies, selecting terms from those vocabs, etc

    Is there a tutorial, and/or can I access a sandbox (this is suggested by your answer to Dan). 

    Thanks!

    John Erickson (TWC RPI)

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