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Ask HN: Example of your favorite CSV Schema Documentation?

1 points by redlizard ↗ HN
I've been working on an interface that accepts csv, and have been struggling to find good examples of services that have solid definitions of acceptable schema (column names, types, Required/Optional/Constriants).

I'd also be interested in examples that have documented nested arrays, nested objects, or nested object arrays in csv.

I've been thinking about it alot since openAPI/GQL really do solve documentation, and can even autogen from views, but i haven't found something similar for CSV.

2 comments

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not_your_vase
I don't know about a lotbof CSV schema defs, but I found the column definitions in SQLLoader's control files quite intuitive.
redlizard
Ok, after a decent amount of research all i can really find is: https://digital-preservation.github.io/csv-schema/#toc4

Not in love. Doesn't really handle nested arrays/ objects. Also doesn't generate human readable documentation.

Worried I may have to roll my own :(, but this feels like it is a solved problem.

Breaking it down into 3 sections:

1. Schema Definition 2. Documentation (Autogenerated from schema) 3. Deserialization that applies type constraints and validation

I'd be happy with the first 2 and to take care of deserialization myself. Something with all three rolled into one would be lovely.

The major requirement i haven't been able to find support for are nested objects or arrays in a csv.

Example header: firstname, lastname, contact_0, contact_1, contact_2, address.address_1.1, address.address_2.1, address.zip.1, address.state.1, address.address_1.2, address.address_2.2, address.zip.2, address.state.2,