Welcome to the Chem ID Tutorial Series; it's great to have you here! This blog series is dedicated to all things related to the Chem ID Data Management Platform. Check back often for new content, how to, feature releases, and general discussions regarding chemical data management and analysis. Let's get started!
Oh yeah, if you still need to create your Chem ID Account you can sign up here!
This tutorial covers the process for mapping CSV result files and saving the template map to Chem ID, then using the saved template to automatically import results in the same format.
One of the ubiquitous file formats for chemical result files is the Comma Separated Values (CSV) file format. The CSV file format is a comma delimited file meaning commas serve as the column separator for data values and new lines indicate a new row of data. Download the example Import Test File below to inspect some common elements of a result summary CSV file if you need an example to work with for this tutorial. Otherwise feel free to use one of your standard csv result summary output files to follow along. Also feel free to download and edit the test file; just be sure to save it again as a .csv!
Note: you may find it helpful or interesting to inspect the file contents in both a text file viewer (such as notepad) and spreadsheet file viewer (such as excel). If not, no worries, I've included some screen shares below!
The Chem ID CSV mapper allows the user to define where standard fields such as test name, test description, and data units reside within a CSV data template by associating the proper column and row in the CSV file with the corresponding standard data type. Likewise, data tables are defined in the same way by indicating which columns correspond to what data and where the data table begins.
Let's start with the test file above and open with excel or another spreadsheet viewer and put some data in the bottom data table. If you're in a hurry, I got you; download a prefilled example here.
This will serve as the jumping off point for the rest of this tutorial. When you're ready, join me in the video below; see you there!