/csv-importer

Import arbitrary data in CSV format to Pelias

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

This repository is part of the Pelias project. Pelias is an open-source, open-data geocoder originally sponsored by Mapzen. Our official user documentation is here.

Pelias CSV Importer

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This importer is designed to bring data into Pelias from a properly formatted CSV file.

It's originally based off of the OpenAddresses importer, which also uses a CSV format.

Overview

This importer will process any CSV, attempting to create a Pelias document for each row.

In order to be useful, each row needs to define a source, a latitude, a longitude, and either an address, name or both.

This importer will accept any column name as uppercase or lowercase. Lowercase has priority if both are present.

Latitude

Latitude can come from a column called lat

Longitude

Longitude can come from a column called lon

Address

A valid address consists of at least a street, and possibly a housenumber and postalcode.

Valid column names for street are: street

Valid column names for housenumber are: housenumber, number

Valid column names for postalcode are: postalcode, zipcode

Name

A name is a free-form string that represents the name of a record. It might be the name of a venue which also has an address, or the name of a city, mountain, or other interesting feature.

Valid column names for name are: name

Layer

Pelias allows sorting records into different layers, representing different classes of data.

The most common layers are address, street, and venue. Address and street have special meaning to Pelias: when Pelias looks for an address, it can also attempt to use its interpolation engine to fill in missing addresses. If no addresses (exact or interpolated) are found, Pelias will try to find a street record matching the street from the original address in the query.

Another type of layer is "administrative" layers such as city and country.

Layers do not have to fall into these categories. Any layer that doesn't have special meaning to Pelias can still be use to filter with the layers parameter to the Pelias API.

Valid column names for the layer value are: layer and layer_id

Source

Pelias understands that different data records come from different sources, and allows filtering based on source. Common data projects that represent sources in Pelias include OpenStreetMap, OpenAddresses, and Who's on First.

Custom data with arbitrary sources are supported by this importer and can be used for user filtering. The source value won't have any other effect on how Pelias treats a record when querying.

Valid column names for the source value are : source

ID

An ID is a unique identifier for each record. Pelias IDs are strings, so they can contain text. Pelias records must have a unique source, layer, and ID. Attempting to create multiple records with the same source, layer and ID will cause all but the most recent record to be overwritten.

If an ID is not specified for a row in a CSV, the row number will be used.

Custom data

Arbitrary custom data that does not fit into the standard Pelias schema can be stored for later retrieval under the addendum property.

Currently, custom data is supported when encoded as any valid JSON object. In the future, support for adding individual values via CSV columns will be supported.

Custom data entires are namespaced, so this importer supports any column starting with addendum_json_. The rest of the column name will determine the namespace.

For example, to store a WikiData and Geonames concordance ID, the following CSV format might be used:

id name source layer lat lon addendum_json_geonames addendum_json_wikidata
1 test custom venue 5 6 "{ ""id"": 600 } { ""id"": ""Q47"" }"

The Pelias API will then return a GeoJSON Feature like the following:

{
  "properties": {
    "id": "1",
    "gid": "custom:venue:1",
    "layer": "venue",
    "source": "custom",
    "source_id": "1",
    "name": "test",
    "confidence": 1,
    "match_type": "exact",
    "accuracy": "centroid",
    "label": "London, England, United Kingdom",
    "addendum": {
      "geonames": {
        "id": 600
      },
      "wikidata": {
        "id": "Q47"
      }
    }
  }
}

Requirements

Node.js is required.

See Pelias software requirements for supported versions.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/pelias/csv-importer
cd csv-importer
npm install

Usage

# download files, if desired
./bin/download

# run an import
./bin/start

Downloading CSV files

This importer includes a downloader that supports downloading any uncompressed CSV files over HTTP/HTTPS.

Configuration

This importer can be configured in pelias-config, in the imports.csv hash. A sample configuration file might look like:

{
  "esclient": {
    "hosts": [
      {
        "env": "development",
        "protocol": "http",
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 9200
      }
    ]
  },
  "api": {
    "targets": {
      "yoursource": ["yourlayers"]
    }
  },
  "logger": {
    "level": "debug"
  },
  "imports": {
    "whosonfirst": {
      "datapath": "/mnt/data/whosonfirst/",
      "importPostalcodes": false,
      "importVenues": false
    },
    "csv": {
      "datapath": "/path/to/your/csv/files",
      "files": [],
      "download": [
        "https://example.com/csv-to-download.csv"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Important: You must put any custom source and layers imported by your data in pelias.json as explained in the relevant API configuration documentation. For a reasonably common use case for the source csv with only records in the address layer, the following configuration is a good starting point:

{
  "api": {
    "targets": {
      "csv": ["address"]
    }
  }
}

The following properties are recognized:

This importer is configured using the pelias-config module. The following configuration options are supported by this importer.

key required default description
datapath yes The absolute path of the directory containing data files, or where downloaded files will be stored.
files no [] An array of the names of the files to import. If specified, only these files will be imported. If not specified, or empty, all .csv files in the given directory will be imported.
download no [] An array of URLs of CSV files that can be downloaded. Files must be plain-text (uncompressed) CSV files