How to: Replicate to and from Text Files

Data Director can import and export data from text files. Default is that column separator is the Tab character and file extension is .txt, but both can be changed.

Database connection string format: Database=<data folder>;|file|<ext>@<sepchar>

Where <data folder> is the location where the data files will be exported to or imported from, <ext> is file extension, and <sepchar> is the separation character to separate data columns in the Data File.

Each file should be named by Table name with <ext> extension.

To change the separator and file extension, change the plugin parameter string for the Connection string.

Connection string File Ext Separator
Database=<folder>;|file|none .txt Tab (char 9)
Database=<folder>;|file|tsf .tsf Tab (char 9)
Database=<folder>;|file|csv@; .csv Semicolon ;

Format of the data in the file should always have the first line starting with Table, Field, Column names, then data comes in line 2. Text data can be surrounded by “ “, but that is not necessary.

Example 1

Connection string: Database=c:\DBFiles;|file|none

Data file name: Customer.txt
No.    Name    Search Name    Name 2    Address
"011"  "Spotsmeyer"  "SPOTSMEYER"  "612 South Sunset Drive"

Example 2

Connection string: Database=c:\DBFiles;|file|csv@;

Data file name: Customer.csv
No.;Name;Search Name;Name 2;Address
"011";"Spotsmeyer";"SPOTSMEYER";;"612 South Sunset Drive"