Last Edited 1st June 2018 by Jon

Sailwave can import data from and export data to CSV files. CSV stands for comma separated values. The form of a CSV file is a line of data field names followed by lines of data:-

Data field names
Data fields
Data fields
Data fields
…

The data field names tell Sailwave the data field positions in the data field lines. Each import facility will specify a list of valid data field names.  The names can be anything you like – Sailwave will attempt to guess the actual fields that it will import to and you can manually map your names to the Sailwave field names during the import.  However to minimise messing around, use the standard Sailwave field names.

Sailwave is not sensitive to the case of the data field names. Blank lines in the file are ignored.

The following is an example of importing a series summary, i.e. the results for each race of a series for each competitor.

SailNo, Class, R1, R2
33454, Laser, 1, 2
55684, Laser, 2, 1

If a data field contains a comma, it must be enclosed in speech quotes; for example:-

SailNo, Crew, R1, R2
33454, “Joe,Fred”, 1, 2
55684, “Ben,Alex”, 2, 1

If you did not do this, the comma after Joe, for example, would be interpreted as the crew delimiting comma. When generating CSV files form other programs (like Excel) you may find that they put all fields in speech quotes or that they put fields with commas and/or spaces in speech quotes. Sailwave is not sensitive extra quotes and the file will import successfully. For example the last example could also look like this:-

“SailNo”, “Crew”, “R1”, “R2”
“33454”, “Joe,Fred”, “1”, “2”
“55684”, “Ben,Alex”, “2”, “1”

Notice that the rules apply to the field names as well as the field data.

Data fields can be supplied in any order, so the last example could also be written as:-

R1, Crew, SailNo, R2
1, “Joe,Fred”, 33454, 2
2, “Ben,Alex”, 55684, 1

Sailwave can import CSV files generated on a DOS/Windows platform (each line terminated with CRLF) and a Unix/Linux platform (each line terminated with LF only).