[Erp5-dev] Proposal for CSV import/export enhancements

[Jean-Paul Smets]

Hi,

I am not sure developing CSV stuff makes any sense today we have oood. I
would rather recommend using oood to import / export any kind of file
including CSV.

For example, what you describe here:

"First one upload file, second onechoose some attributes and provide
user special listbox, which will
"simulate" how will system understand provided CSV. Something similar
to OpenOffice CSV import/export dialog. "

is mostly implementend already using openffice format.

I do not understand the interest of developing the same thing for CSV
when it already exists for ODS file format and oood can do the
conversion quite well (with good support of all kinds of CSV formats and
conventions).

My recommendation would rather be to
1- document what already exists based on ODS
2- use it
3- extend it (with unit tests in particular)
4- extend it more to include oood in the loop and support CSV, XLS, etc.
5- contribute directly to existing bt5 after making sure existing unit
tests do not break
6- and at some point remove the current CSV support in ERP5

This is what we are planning to do and any help would be much welcome.

Now, it is possible that I missed something about CSV which does not fit
in the plan. Please let me know if something is missing.

Regards,

JPS.





Łukasz Nowak a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> While playing with production we are able to import BOMs and many
> other useful information from various CAD/CAM/etc programs using CSV.
>
> As CSV is quite...hm...undefined, there are many problems. Many
> programs use different implementation of CSV - some of them use ";" as
> separator some ",". Some use '"' as quote mark, some "'". Some use
> UTF-8 encoding, some other ASCII, and so on. So, IMHO, importing of
> CSV might be two-phase system. First one upload file, second one
> choose some attributes and provide user special listbox, which will
> "simulate" how will system understand provided CSV. Something similar
> to OpenOffice CSV import/export dialog.
>
> Exporting might be also enhanced, to support many CSV types.
>
> I'm able to provide such dialogues, create basic unit tests, and make
> such changes backward compatible. We need it and I think some other
> implementation would be happy to have featured CSV import/export.
>
> What do you think about it? Would you accept to create erp5_csv_enhanced
> Business Template on which I would do my development and then, after
> acceptation and review put it into erp5_core, or shall I do it in-house
> and publicise work when done? Sending work efforts to mailing list is
> quite, hm, problematic. It would end up with patches, to patches, to
> patches, and so on...
>
> Regards,
> Luke
>
>   


-- 
Jean-Paul Smets-Solanes, Nexedi CEO - Tel. +33(0)6 62 05 76 14
Nexedi: Consulting and Development of Libre / Open Source Software
http://www.nexedi.com
ERP5: Libre/ Open Source ERP Software for small and medium companies
http://www.erp5.org