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Data-Prepare-0.006
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/ Data::Prepare

NAME

Data::Prepare - prepare CSV (etc) data for automatic processing

SYNOPSIS

  use Text::CSV qw(csv);
  use Data::Prepare qw(
    cols_non_empty non_unique_cols
    chop_lines chop_cols header_merge
  );
  my $data = csv(in => 'unclean.csv', encoding => "UTF-8");
  chop_cols([0, 2], $data);
  header_merge($spec, $data);
  chop_lines(\@lines, $data); # mutates the data

  # or:
  my @non_empty_counts = cols_non_empty($data);
  print Dumper(non_unique_cols($data));

DESCRIPTION

A module with utility functions for turning spreadsheets published for human consumption into ones suitable for automatic processing. Intended to be used by the supplied data-prepare script. See that script's documentation for a suggested workflow.

All the functions are exportable, none are exported by default. All the $data inputs are an array-ref-of-array-refs.

FUNCTIONS

chop_cols

  chop_cols([0, 2], $data);

Uses splice to delete each zero-based column index. The example above deletes the first and third columns.

chop_lines

  chop_lines([ 0, (-1) x $n ], $data);

Uses splice to delete each zero-based line index, in the order given. The example above deletes the first, and last $n, lines.

header_merge

  header_merge([
    { line => 1, from => 'up', fromspec => 'lastnonblank', to => 'self', matchto => 'HH', do => [ 'overwrite' ] },
    { line => 1, from => 'self', matchfrom => '.', to => 'down', do => [ 'prepend', ' ' ] },
    { line => 2, from => 'self', fromspec => 'left', to => 'self', matchto => 'Year', do => [ 'prepend', '/' ] },
    { line => 2, from => 'self', fromspec => 'literal:Country', to => 'self', tospec => 'index:0', do => [ 'overwrite' ] },
  ], $data);
  # Turns:
  # [
  #   [ '', 'Proportion of households with', '', '', '' ],
  #   [ '', '(HH1)', 'Year', '(HH2)', 'Year' ],
  #   [ '', 'Radio', 'of data', 'TV', 'of data' ],
  # ]
  # into (after a further chop_lines to remove the first two):
  # [
  #   [
  #     'Country',
  #     'Proportion of households with Radio', 'Proportion of households with Radio/Year of data',
  #     'Proportion of households with TV', 'Proportion of households with TV/Year of data'
  #   ]
  # ]

Applies the given transformations to the given data, so you can make the given data have the first row be your desired headers for the columns. As shown in the above example, this does not delete lines so further operations may be needed.

Broadly, each hash-ref specifies one operation, which acts on a single (specified) line-number. It scans along that line from left to right, unless tospec matches index:\d+ in which case only one operation is done.

The above merge operations in YAML format:

    spec:
      - do:
          - overwrite
        from: up
        fromspec: lastnonblank
        line: 2
        matchto: HH
        to: self
      - do:
          - prepend
          - ' '
        from: self
        line: 2
        matchfrom: .
        to: down
      - do:
          - prepend
          - /
        from: self
        fromspec: left
        line: 3
        matchto: Year
        to: self
      - do:
          - overwrite
        from: self
        fromspec: literal:Country
        line: 3
        to: self
        tospec: index:0

This turns the first three lines of data excerpted from the supplied example data (shown in CSV with spaces inserted for alignment reasons only):

        ,Proportion of households with,       ,     ,
        ,(HH1)                        ,Year   ,(HH2),Year
        ,Radio                        ,of data,TV   ,of data
  Belize,58.7                         ,2019   ,78.7 ,2019

into the following. Note that the first two lines will still be present (not shown), possibly modified, so you will need your chop_lines to remove them. The columns of the third line are shown, one per line, for readability:

  Country,
  Proportion of households with Radio,
  Proportion of households with Radio/Year of data,
  Proportion of households with TV,
  Proportion of households with TV/Year of data

This achieves a single row of column-headings, with each column-heading being unique, and sufficiently meaningful.

pk_insert

  pk_insert({
    column_heading => 'ISO3CODE',
    local_column => 'Country',
    pk_column => 'official_name_en',
  }, $data, $pk_map, $stopwords);

In YAML format, this is the same configuration:

  pk_insert:
    - files:
        - examples/CoreHouseholdIndicators.csv
      spec:
        column_heading: ISO3CODE
        local_column: Country
        pk_column: official_name_en
        use_fallback: true

And the $pk_map made with "make_pk_map", inserts the column_heading in front of the current zero-th column, mapping the value of the Country column as looked up from the specified column of the pk_spec file, and if use_fallback is true, also tries "pk_match" if no exact match is found. In that case, stopwords must be specified in the configuration

cols_non_empty

  my @col_non_empty = cols_non_empty($data);

In the given data, iterates through all rows and returns a list of quantities of non-blank entries in each column. This can be useful to spot columns with only a couple of entries, which are more usefully chopped.

non_unique_cols

  my $col2count = non_unique_cols($data);

Takes the first row of the given data, and returns a hash-ref mapping any non-unique column-names to the number of times they appear.

key_to_index

Given an array-ref (probably the first row of a CSV file, i.e. column headings), returns a hash-ref mapping the cell values to their zero-based index.

make_pk_map

  my $altcol2value2pk = make_pk_map($data, $pk_colkey, \@other_colkeys);

Given $data, the heading of the primary-key column, and an array-ref of headings of alternative key columns, returns a hash-ref mapping each of those alternative key columns (plus the $pk_colkey) to a map from that column's value to the relevant row's primary-key value.

This is most conveniently represented in YAML format:

  pk_spec:
    file: examples/country-codes.csv
    primary_key: ISO3166-1-Alpha-3
    alt_keys:
      - ISO3166-1-Alpha-2
      - UNTERM English Short
      - UNTERM English Formal
      - official_name_en
      - CLDR display name
    stopwords:
      - islands
      - china
      - northern

pk_col_counts

  my ($colname2potential_key2count, $no_exact_match) = pk_col_counts($data, $pk_map);

Given $data and a primary-key (etc) map created by the above, returns a tuple of a hash-ref mapping each column that gave any matches to a further hash-ref mapping each of the potential key columns given above to how many matches it gave, and an array-ref of rows that had no exact matches.

pk_match

  my ($best, $pk_cols_unique_best) = pk_match($value, $pk_map, $stopwords);

Given a value, $pk_map, and an array-ref of case-insensitive stopwords, returns its best match for the right primary-key value, and an array-ref of which primary-key columns in the $pk_map matched the given value exactly once.

The latter is useful for analysis purposes to select which primary-key column to use for this data-set.

The algorithm used for this best-match:

  • Splits the value into words (or where a word is two or more capital letters, letters). The search allows any, or no, text, to occur between these entities. Each configured primary-key column's keys are searched for matches.

  • If there is a separating , or ( (as commonly used for abbreviations), splits the value into chunks, reverses them, and then reassembles the chunks as above for a similar search.

  • Only if there were no matches from the previous steps, splits the value into words. Words that are shorter than three characters, or that occur in the stopword list, are omitted. Then each word is searched for as above.

  • "Votes" on which primary-key value got the most matches. Tie-breaks on which primary-key value matched on the shortest key in the relevant $pk_map column, and then on the lexically lowest-valued primary-key value, to ensure stable return values.

SEE ALSO

Text::CSV

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) Ed J

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.