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How to format a CSV cell with a date

Here is a little tutorial showing you how to format a cell containing a datetime and date field in a CSV file. When importing a CSV in eVouala, it is important to have a specific cell format that will allow to keep a timestamp column in the eVouala database. Note that the formatting of the date for a CSV file respects the ISO 8601 standard. Here is how to proceed:

1) In your CSV file, right click on the cell(s) containing the datetime field. 

2) Select Format cells...

3) In the first tab (Number), select the Custom category. You can then, in the Type box, enter the following text: yyyy-mm-dd h:mm:ss, which means that you are defining that your cell format to be like this: year-month-day hour:minutes:seconds. For example, a cell formatted like this should be displayed as such: 2017-03-23 19:41:00

yyyy-mm-dd.JPG

In the following example, a CSV file with 4 fileds having a datetime can be formatted this way: The fileds "created", "received" and "last_update" have a yyyy-mm-dd h:mm:ss format, whereas the "gateway_date" has the following format: yyyy-mm-dd because we only want the date for this field, not the time. Your CVS should look like this:

CVS.JPG

To verify if your formatting worked, open your CSV with a text editor like Notepad++ and verify the cells you formatted. Normally, you should see the same display for the formatted cells in the text editor as the one in your CSV:

notepad.JPG

You can then upload your CSV in the Platform. 

You can see the data structure in eVouala for each field (image below). Those who were formatted using the yyyy-mm-dd h:mm:ss are considered datetime type and "gateway_date" that used the yyyy-mm-dd format is now a date type. 

date_structure.png

 Within eVouala, you can see the display of each field as well if you select a feature.   

rawdata_2.png

 

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