Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Importing text files

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    Importing text files

    I am trying to import a comma delimited file.

    When I use the the Import genie I am having a problem with getting the first row to bring in the field names.

    When I do not check the first row is field names, all of the fields line up properly.

    When I check the first row contains field names, the alignment is a mess and I do not see an easy way to fix it.

    I have attached the file.

    Any direction would be helpful.
    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: Importing text files

    Hi Will....


    I looked at your delimited file, one thing that caught my eye is that after the last field name you start your first data string with a date & time value yet the first field name is Description? You have a leading "," in front of the date but if the description data is character & is null, you should at least have "" empty quotes before the comma....

    This is what is in your delimited file...
    ","TaxRate","TermsCode"
    ,"05/12/2003 5:42:49 PM

    Try putting the open & close quotes following the last field name & crlf record delimiter.... Then import with field names & see what happens...

    ","TaxRate","TermsCode"
    "","05/12/2003 5:42:49 PM


    doug

    Comment

      #3
      RE: Importing text files

      Thanks for trying to straighten me out, but I am lost.

      When you say to put the quotes in, where am I doing that, on the raw data that I am trying to import (the infor is coming from a client, so that won't happen) or while using the import genie? I do not see a way to put the quotes in during the import process??

      I can bring this data into Alpha4V7 with no problem. But alas I am trying to get away from that.

      Any help would be most appreciated.

      Comment

        #4
        RE: Importing text files

        Will,

        When I look at your text file, the first line contains fieldnames. The first fieldname is "Description". However, there are no entries in that column in any other line. All that's present is the comma that would delimit the contents of the "Description" field if it were, in fact present.

        In all lines other than the first, the leading comma is going to cause you trouble. It must be preceded by the contents of the Description field, delimited in quotes. If you don't have any values, you could indicate that the Description field is empty by entering a leading pair of double quote marks.

        Instead of

        Code:
        ,"next field value"

you'd have

"","next field value"
        In short the Description field is missing from all
        of your lines, and the omission is being handled
        correctly.

        -- tom

        Comment

          #5
          RE: Importing text files

          Thanks for responding.

          I am frustrated with trying to get this to work. I have no problem dealing with this in Alpha4V6. You indicate that the program is handling the leading comma correctly, but I can't bring the data into A5 directly. When I do not use field names the data comes in correctly. But then to make the data easily identifiable I am going through a bunch of steps to identify what is in Field 1 through Field 176.

          It seems odd that I can use Excel to get at the data and then convert it to a dbf or I can use A4 and then access the data through A5.

          But I can't bring the data into A5 directly? Am I missing some step in telling A5 to ignore the first field, but use field names??

          Thanks for any direction you are able to give.

          Comment

            #6
            RE: Importing text files

            Will,

            possibly, yes. You haven't outlined the steps you're taking sufficiently for us to know.

            How about posting a sample of the text file, to see if we can import it with fieldnames on our machines ?

            We'll need a copy of your table, and its dictionaries.

            -- tom

            Comment

              #7
              RE: Importing text files

              Will,

              I think I jumped to the wrong conclusion about your problem.

              Having spent some more time with your data and the File Import Genie in Vers 5 of Alpha Five I've reached the tentative conclusion that the difficulty you're having is NOT related to the absence of field values in the first 'column' of your source text file.

              Instead, I think it's related to the length of your fieldnames in the first row of your source text file.

              The max fieldname width in the original DBF spec is 10 chars. Most of yours, including the first fieldname in your source, are longer. Alpha Five supports longer filenames by storing them in the dictionaries for each DBF. Here, the import genie seems to have trouble when your fieldnames are longer than 10 chars. This looks like a bug to me, and I've reported it this afternoon. Hope I'm wrong but the only way I could get the import genie to recognize your fieldnames AND import the data to a new result table was to shorten each fieldname to 10 chars or less.

              So, based on this, I'm thinking that A5V5 build 1450.1040 is mishandling long fieldnames when
              1) the user is importing ascii text files
              2) that are comma delimited
              3) double quote qualified
              4) and the fieldnames are specified in the first row of the import source file as names to be used in the resulting new table, but not counted as data which should, themselves, be imported.

              I hope I'm wrong, but this looks like the problem to me.

              -- tom

              Comment

                #8
                RE: Importing text files

                Whew, I am feeling better. Having gotten pretty capable with A4V6 and other programs I was stumped on the this apparently simple task. If you are having problems I do not feel like such an idiot.

                I came up with a similar workaround with out realizing what I was doing.

                Thanks for sticking with it and giving me some direction.

                Will

                Comment

                Previous template Next
                Working...
                X