Bulk Imports

Estimated time: 30 minutes

Overview

Questions

Can you automate the process of adding information to Arches?

Objectives

Format and upload bulk data in Arches.

Bulk Data Manager (Advanced)

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Harry has over 500 different coins he wants to write into the database. So far, we have only written 10. There must be a better way to write these coins into the database, especially with a repetitive task.

Arches does provide such a feature in the form of the Bulk Data Manager, though it is disabled by default. If enabled, Bulk Data Manager allows for automated uploads, edits and downloads of data of Resources en-mass.

On the server we are working on, Harry has enabled the use of Bulk Data Manager to facilitate the mass import of his coin collection. Lets try out this feature by populating the database with the dataset in the previous episode:

Name	Design	Mint Date	Mint Quantity	Face Value	Actual Value	Designer	Country
Belgium 2 Euros	King Albert II and his royal monogram, the letter “A” beneath a crown	2004	10000000	2	2	Jan Alfons Keustermans	Belgium
Croatia 50 cents	Nikola Tesla with the Croatian checkerboard in the background.	2023	30000000	.50	.50 cents	Ivica Družak	Croatia
Croatia 1 Euro	A marten with the Croatian checkerboard in the background.	2023	30000000	1	1	Stjepan Pranjković	Croatia
Croatia 5 cent	Nikola Tesla with the Croatian checkerboard in the background.	2023	10000000	0.05	0.05	Maja Škripelj	Croatia
Latvia 1 Euro	Latvian folk maide	2014	10000000	1	1	Guntars Sietiņš	Latvia
Irish 2 Euro	Celtic harp	2003	30000000	2	2	Jarlath Hayes	Ireland
Irish 1 Euro	Celtic harp	2003	30000000	1	1	Jarlath Hayes	Ireland
Irish 50 cents	Celtic harp	2003	10000000	.50	.50	Jarlath Hayes	Ireland
Irish 5 cents	Celtic harp	2003	5000000	.05	.05	Jarlath Hayes	Ireland
Brussels Atomium Commemerative Coin	Image of the Atomium in the center of the coin and the engraver’s initials to right with two mintmarks near the base.	2006	20000	2	20	Luc Luycx	Belgium

Click to Download Photos for the coins

We can access Bulk Data Manager on the sidebar, indicated in red on the figure above. From there, navigate Import Branch Excel and download the template for Coin.

You should get the following excel spreadsheet:

Recall that this is the data structure of the Coin shown in the previous lesson, with separate sheets for each node (highlighted in red). The first column (in orange) refers to the system ID for the resource, which Arches can allocate. We can fill it as a list of unique numbers. The third column (in green) indicates the number of entries for each resource, since there is only one entry for each node, we fill this column with identity (1). The third column (in blue), contains actual information, so in the case of the name of the coin, it could be “Belgium 2 Euros” for instance.

Go down each spreadsheets and fill them up with the information provided. For the identity spreadsheet, an entry for the Belgium 2 Euro coin will look like this:

Example

For the Countries tab, Arches requires the internal ID of country resources, which while we can find, we do not currently have, so we shall leave it blank and manually add it into the database later.

For the Photos tab, we write the file name of the photo on the required column and supply the photo in the same directory as the spreadsheet, which we will later compress to a zip file. Given the name of the photo for the Belgium 2 Euro coin is “belgien1-2euro.jpg”, we would fill up the entry for it as such:

Example

Once the excel spreadsheet is filled, we include it in the same directory as the photographs and compress it to a zip file. This file can then be uploaded to the Arches database through Bulk Data Manager.

Afterwards, manually link each coin to their country of mintage accordingly and the database is complete.