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Import from Obsidian Portal into RealmWorks

daplunk said:
So thinking this through.

I want to enter alot of data and need to understand the efficiency gains that can be made with this process.

lets say i have 300 of the same articles to enter. I'm thinking about items currently.

Article Name:
Type:
Group:
Rarity:
Description:
History:
Abilities/Effects:
Curse:

Would it be possible to put all the information into a spreadsheet and then manipulate the spreadsheet to output a text string in an XML format that could then be turned into an import file and loaded into RW?
Click to expand...

I'm going to say it's not that straightforward. I mentioned in another post that once you add cover art in the export window, there's no way to delete it. So I tried to get rid of it manually.

  1. I did a full export of my realm.
  2. I deleted the encoded data for the cover art.
  3. I left the XML structure in place. I only deleted the data.
  4. I imported that back into RW.
  5. Doing so produced an error.

I tried the exact same thing with the exact same realm, but without making any edits, and it imported fine. This indicates that it's not JUST the data. It seems as if there's a checksum value or something equivalent.

I haven't dug deeper. I submitted the error file to support, but haven't heard back yet.
 
daplunk said:
You can Mail Merge into XML?
Click to expand...
XML is just text with tags that give some meaning to programs and people that understand those tags. A mail merge template can have whatever text you want. Run the mail merge with an appropriate template, save as plain text, and you have a file containing XML.

kbs666 said:
I think he means he creates a bunch of mail merge documents and then runs a VBA script to extract the plain text from them.
Click to expand...
I used VBA to automate and customize the process for non-technical volunteers that needed to do these same things, but you wouldn't need it for this.
 
EightBitz said:
I tried the exact same thing with the exact same realm, but without making any edits, and it imported fine. This indicates that it's not JUST the data. It seems as if there's a checksum value or something equivalent.

I haven't dug deeper. I submitted the error file to support, but haven't heard back yet.
Click to expand...

In your case, I think you said that you kept the XML tags for the cover picture, and merely deleted the data. It would probably work if you deleted the tags that surrounded the data as well.
 
Parody said:
XML is just text with tags that give some meaning to programs and people that understand those tags. A mail merge template can have whatever text you want. Run the mail merge with an appropriate template, save as plain text, and you have a file containing XML.
Click to expand...

There are web sites where you can upload a CSV and it will generate a simple XML file for you
 
I admit it up front: I have no knowledge concerning XML.

But I just had a look at my excel and I can "save as" "other formats" "XML".

Would it be that simple?

I haven't tested (not sure what I should test).

This looked interesting: http://www.excel-easy.com/examples/xml.html

If I can find the time, I will have a closer look one of these weeks.
 
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It is almost that easy.

Excel will export a workbook as XML if you provide it an XSD schema, a XML stylesheet basically, then you map the parts of the sheet to the elements in the stylesheet. Then you can export to XML.
 
Farling said:
There are web sites where you can upload a CSV and it will generate a simple XML file for you
Click to expand...
Which isn't all that helpful if you don't know how to proceed from "table in CSV format" or "dataset tagged with XML" to "data ready for import into Realm Works" (or whatever the destination happens to be). You need a whole workflow. If you already know how to use Mail Merge then you can use that as part of the solution. If you already know how to write transformations then that can work for you too. If you don't know any way to get between them I doubt you'll care how you get there as long as you get from point A to point B with as little hassle as possible. (Probably by letting other people write it for you. :)

Excel can output spreadsheet data in XML formats using its schema or a mapping you provide, if either works better for you. That's only one part of the puzzle, though, just like a site that takes a table in CSV and spits out similar data in an XML format.
 
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Farling said:
In your case, I think you said that you kept the XML tags for the cover picture, and merely deleted the data. It would probably work if you deleted the tags that surrounded the data as well.
Click to expand...

I THINK I tried that? Can't swear to it, though. I'll give it (another?) shot later, just to be sure.
 
Farling said:
In your case, I think you said that you kept the XML tags for the cover picture, and merely deleted the data. It would probably work if you deleted the tags that surrounded the data as well.
Click to expand...

Nope. That still didn't work. It stopped at the same place (percentage wise) with the same error.

I looked through and didn't see anything that looked like a checksum value, but in the xml tags, there are uuid parameters and signature parameters. Maybe those are somehow hashed to verify file integrity and validation?

I'm only guessing. I don't actually know. Maybe it's just a fluke.
 
EightBitz said:
Nope. That still didn't work. It stopped at the same place (percentage wise) with the same error.

I looked through and didn't see anything that looked like a checksum value, but in the xml tags, there are uuid parameters and signature parameters. Maybe those are somehow hashed to verify file integrity and validation?

I'm only guessing. I don't actually know. Maybe it's just a fluke.
Click to expand...

For the signature I've noticed that it increments by 1 throughout the export file.
 
I didn't bother putting signature or uuids into any of the main topics at all, but I kept them in the structure definition which appears at the start of the file.

I have a feeling that I will have to find a way to put the uuids on the individual topics which would be generated from a unique Obsidian Portal URL in order to allow re-import of subsequent OB dump files.

There is no general checksum that I can see in the XML export files.
 
Zaphod Beebledoc said:
Where did you get those signatures and uuids from in the first place?
Click to expand...

The information on the structure elements came from doing a structure-only export:

I started with a new realm.
I added in some new category definitions.
I performed a structure-only export.
I looked for only the structure definitions for my new categories.
I stripped out all the other structure definitions.

That left me with the "structure" part that I could use as a template for my import script.
 
A thought came to me last night about uuids and signatures. Why not have a substitute for them them indicates to RW that a uuid or signature is needed?
 
Zaphod Beebledoc said:
A thought came to me last night about uuids and signatures. Why not have a substitute for them them indicates to RW that a uuid or signature is needed?
Click to expand...

It would certainly make import scripts a lot simpler if there was an attribute similar to UUID which was merely a "uniqueness" string (of arbitrary type). This would allow any import scripts to use whatever strings they liked, rather than having to generate a UUID format string from an arbitrary string.

(There are rules in the RFC about UUID format about how you could do this, but it isn't simple to script inside XSLT.)
 
Greetings - just downloaded RW and was looking to try out this approach to get material of OP.

I have the files in a directory. When I run the script as per the directions, I get a flash of code then ... nothing (it never asks for a the OP zip file). I am running Win10. Any thoughts?

I did see there was a version out here (https://github.com/farling42/RealmWorksScripting)

But it does not appear to read the second version (and I know little to nothing of scripting).

Any help/ideas/updated files?
 
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