Anyone willing to share Csv datasource implementations

#1

Hey guys,

We have a conference where we would like to use a Csv datasource to easily update content such as - time, participant, location


The datalist can then filter based on time - without a user having to constantly filter results


I was just wondering if anyone had urls that they could share where they have used this approach?


Cheers

Fuzz

(Joel Porgand) #2

The trouble with the csv datasource is you're limited to string/regex matching, which is not really adequate for working with time/dates. If you're doing something simple it might work though.

#3

Thanks JP - so you think it would be easier just to do event filtering? I suppose the idea was that a user just could replace all derails on one foul swoop but creating and editing events is just as simple.

(Joel Porgand) #4

Thanks JP - so you think it would be easier just to do event filtering? I suppose the idea was that a user just could replace all derails on one foul swoop but creating and editing events is just as simple.

 

Probably. 

(Kequi) #5

I've used them quite a bit in this section of our site: - pmlive.com/top_pharma_list   used lots and lots of filtering and dynamic filtering - Paint Layouts, nested paints layouts with variables -  plus datatables js to structure the data.

 

It's kind of OK - and we do end up with one csv data source powering the whole thing which is nice.

 

The downside for me was the filtering and extracting the data took a big hit on the performance of the pages - particularly when we ended up with 8 mini tables on a page like this: http://www.pmlive.com/top_pharma_list/pharma_companies/pfizer

 

In addition - if it's a complex csv file it can be just as much hassle to get it formatted right as it would be to just add metadata to standard assets.

We were constanly having to covert to range and make sure empty fields didn't come across as 0 or - or ERR etc - we set up a dummy csv data source so we could test the upload eachtime - as it's not very forgiving if you get it wrong - and there's no easy 'revert' option and you can't download the current csv file (IE: the last one you uploaded) before uploading a new one so you need to keep a local copy just in case.

 

Didn't use any time formats - but I can only imagine it will complicate things quite a bit unless it's pretty simple text format.

#6

Thanks so much Karl! I thought event filtering would just be as easy. There is always room for error saving files and the abilty to overwrite everthing in one foul swoop!

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with it. At this point I think the formats are going to have to be verrry simple.