Structs CSV / TSV Format Reference

The XINA Structs CSV / TSV formats provide a standard delimited text file format for mnemonic and event data.

Source File Format

Files must be either ASCII or UTF-8 encoded. New lines will be interpretted from either \n or \r\n. The conf object may define other customization of the format:

Conf Definition

Key	Value	Default	Description
delimiter	string	auto detect (`','`, `'\t'`, `';'`)	value delimiter
quote_char	character	`"` (double quote character)	value quote character
ignore_lines	number	auto detect	lines to ignore before UUID
mode	`"row"` or `"col"`	auto-detect	file row/col format (see below)
t	`"auto"`, `"iso8601"`, `"s"`, `"ms"`, or `"us"`	`"auto"`	time format (see below)
zone	string	time zone to use if not provided

The first processed line of the file must contain an appropriately generated 128-bit UUID in the standard 36 character format, followed by a single line containing the column header. Lines may preceed the UUID, but they will be ignored. These can be explicitly ignored with the ignore_lines parameter. If this is not provided the parser will interpret the first line starting with a 36 character UUID and no other values as the start of the file data.

If the mode property is "row", the file must contain three columns:

Name	Description	Alternate Names
t	Unix time or ISO8601 zoned timestamp	time, timestamp
k	mnemonic or event key	key, mn, mnemonic, n, name
v	value (numeric, empty, or `null`)	val, value

The header is used to determine the order of the columns.

For example (whitespace added for clarity, not required):

123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000
t , mn    , v
0 , v_mon , 1
0 , i_mon , 5
1 , t_mon , 100
2 , v_mon , 1.1
2 , i_mon , 4
3 , t_mon ,
4 , v_mon , 1.2
4 , i_mon , 3
5 , t_mon , 101

If mode is "col", the file must first contain a time column, followed by a column for each mnemonic. The column headers must specify the mnemonic name or ID for each column. Unlike row, null values must be spelled out explicitly, as empty values will not create a point in the database.

For example, the following is equivalent to the above example (whitespace added for clarity, not required):

123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000
t       , v_mon , i_mon , t_mon
0       , 1     , 5     ,
1       ,       ,       , 100
2       , 1.1   , 4     ,
3       ,       ,       , null
4       , 1.2   , 3     ,
5       ,       ,       , 101

If the mode property is not specified, the mode will be determined by the number of columns in the file. If there are exactly 3 columns with names matching the required columns for the "row" mode, that mode is used; otherwise the file is assumed to use the column mode.

Time Parsing

The mode of time processing is determined by the value for t in conf. The auto mode attempts to interpret the most likely formatting for the timestamp. If the value is an integer or floating point format, it will be interpretted as a Unix timestamp, with precision based on these rules:

t > 1e16: error, value above typical range
t > 1e14: microseconds
t > 1e11: milliseconds
t > 1e8: seconds
t <= 1e8: error, value below typical range

Otherwise it will be interpretted as a zoned ISO8601 timestamp. If t is set explicitly in the configuration the time will always be interpretted in that context. The ISO timestamp may use the standard format: 2023-05-31T17:55:07.000 or condensed 20230531T175507.000. If the zone property provided in the configuration, the timestamps do not require a zone. Otherwise they must include an explicit zone.

Events

Event operations may also be embedded in structs buffer files. These are indicated by keys which start with the $ character. The supported operations are inserting, opening, and closing events.

For the purposes of the following examples, assume a model "m" contains a pipe "p" with 3 event databases, "e", "ef" (single file per event), and "efs" (multi-file per event).

Insert Events

The insert event macro uses the key $event.insert.<database name>, where the database name must be present in the associated pipe. The value may either be a JSON object or JSON array of JSON object(s), each of which defines a single complete event.

Open Event

Creates a single open event (interval with a start time and no end time). Uses the key $event.open.<database name>. The value must be a single JSON object, defining the content of the event record. It may not include an end time.