RealmWorks CSV Import Tool

[Farling]

Originally Posted by mathematical Pi

I have a question. I'm currently building a excel CSV file that wil randomly generate all kinds of intel for towns/cities. I want to take it a step further and have it also generate one or more item shops or other buildings in these towns.

I know I can use the import tool to load up my towns, but is there a way to have it create "sub-topics" at the same time?

for example if my csv looks like this:
Town name, some town data; Shop name; shop data

Could I get:

Topic: Town name (with the town data in correct snippets)
-- Subtopic Shop name (with the shop data in the correct snippets)

You can create a parent/child structure, but my tool doesn't allow the parents to have any other data associated with them.

At the bottom of the structure section there is a button "add parent". That is where you can choose one of the columns in your data to use as the name of a parent topic.
All rows of your data with the same name in the parent topic column will be made children of that single parent.

Note that you can also create a hierarchy of parents in that same area.

Also note that you need to be careful to choose a category type for the parents that is from the same type (Topics for World Almanac, or Articles for Mechanics Reference) as the category type your are creating all your topics/articles from. My tool has no way to know which category types are for the world almanac and which are for the mechanics reference.

Within my tool I haven't given any ability to add information to the parent topics other than just the name/prefix/suffix for the topic.

---

As an alternative, I think that the tool allows you to have a single import file contain more than one category of topics, so if you define your town category fields and your shop category fields (both without parents), then you will end up with all the data being imported in one go.

If you were to use the town name of the shop as a prefix, then it would help you sort them for manually dragging once they are in RW (holding shift or ctrl, I don't remember which, while dragging topics within RW will reassign parentage without a popup appearing each time).

[mathematical Pi]

Originally Posted by Farling

You can create a parent/child structure, but my tool doesn't allow the parents to have any other data associated with them.

At the bottom of the structure section there is a button "add parent". That is where you can choose one of the columns in your data to use as the name of a parent topic.
All rows of your data with the same name in the parent topic column will be made children of that single parent.

Note that you can also create a hierarchy of parents in that same area.

Also note that you need to be careful to choose a category type for the parents that is from the same type (Topics for World Almanac, or Articles for Mechanics Reference) as the category type your are creating all your topics/articles from. My tool has no way to know which category types are for the world almanac and which are for the mechanics reference.

Within my tool I haven't given any ability to add information to the parent topics other than just the name/prefix/suffix for the topic.

---

As an alternative, I think that the tool allows you to have a single import file contain more than one category of topics, so if you define your town category fields and your shop category fields (both without parents), then you will end up with all the data being imported in one go.

If you were to use the town name of the shop as a prefix, then it would help you sort them for manually dragging once they are in RW (holding shift or ctrl, I don't remember which, while dragging topics within RW will reassign parentage without a popup appearing each time).

So with the alternative:

I create my CSV with columns:

Town; Town data; Scribe; Scribe data; Armorer; Armorer data,...
I create a structure file with added categories Shop Scribe, Shop Armorer,....

I import the data and when filling in the shop categories I use the town names as prefix so RW will sort the town and its shops together. Then all I need to do after is drag them on top of the town?

Added question: Can I import maps with the tool? like if I put town maps into the excel?

[Farling]

You can import images using the tool. I think it only works if the cell contains the PATH of the file containing the image, rather than directly storing the image inside the excel spreadsheet.

[Acenoid]

I imported already pictures using the full path and that worked for me !

[Happydevil43]

Hi all,

I am at a loss.. I've been away from RW for a while and just trying to setup a campaign for the kids to run....

So i downloaded the latest importer
Got the beta .255 version
created my structure file
created my import file

when I put the bits into the importer and hit generate (it litterally flashes) and I can see a file created with data in it.

but when Import that file - it does nothing.....I thought maybe its my columns... so I created one with just location names and same thing... am I missing a step here?

*EDIT - Never mind... I am an idiot....I didnt notice that it wasnt on world almanac... *smacks head on wall!"

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Happydevil43

*EDIT - Never mind... I am an idiot....I didnt notice that it wasnt on world almanac... *smacks head on wall!"

Lol - I'm happy the tool is still working :-)

[Happydevil43]

Originally Posted by Farling

Lol - I'm happy the tool is still working :-)

oh it works.... it took me over an hour to delete all the duplicate location entries... because muggins here overwrote the backups and sync'd to the server before his miraculous discovery....