Tyler Data & Insights Reader/Writer (FME Form Package)

Integrating this Format with FME Form

Download from FME Hub

https://hub.safe.com/publishers/safe/packages/socrata

What is FME Hub?

Overview

Tyler Data & Insights (formerly known as Socrata) makes it easy to share tabular data with collaborators or make data accessible to the public.

Data & Insights supports geometry in its columns. This plug-in exposes geometry as attributes with a geometric attribute type, and a value in Well-Known Text (WKT).

Name Change: Socrata to Tyler Data & Insights

This format was originally named Socrata. In 2022, this service was renamed to Tyler Data & Insights.

The keyword and format attribute prefixes in FME were defined before the service was renamed. For compatibility reasons, the Tyler Data & Insights Reader/Writer format keyword and format attribute prefixes continue to use socrata.

Reader Overview

The Tyler Data & Insights Reader uses the Socrata Open Data API (SODA) to download the dataset as a CSV, and then transform the rows to FME features. The results can be filtered by providing a WHERE clause in the Socrata Query Language (SoQL).

Dates and times are returned as-is from the API. The reader does not convert them to FME date format.

Reader Dataset

The reader dataset is the URL for a Data & Insights dataset. It must contain a valid Dataset four-four ID. Examples of valid dataset URLs include:

https://evergreen.data.socrata.com/Demo/French-cheeses-dataset/m58b-pmus

https://evergreen.data.socrata.com/api/views/m58b-pmus

Writer Overview

The Tyler Data & Insights Writer works by saving output features to a CSV file, which is then uploaded and transformed using the Socrata Publishing API. The writer can create new datasets, and either replace or append to existing datasets.

The Socrata Publishing API performs a schema scan on the uploaded CSV to determine the appropriate column types. The writer may submit a revised transformation to the server if the column types decided by the server do not agree with the attribute types set on the writer feature type schema. In the case of dates and times, the writer defers to the formatting determined by the server-side schema scan.

The server may reject rows in the uploaded CSV. This typically occurs if the row’s data does not match the schema. The writer will log the error count, and include a link to the CSV error report provided by the server.

Writer Dataset

The writer dataset is the URL for a Data & Insights Dataset.

  • For append and replace operations, it must be the URL for an existing dataset.
  • When creating a new dataset, this field must either be empty or be a URL for only the host.

Examples of valid dataset URLs include:

https://evergreen.data.socrata.com/ (for dataset creation)

https://evergreen.data.socrata.com/Demo/French-cheeses-dataset/m58b-pmus

https://evergreen.data.socrata.com/api/views/m58b-pmus

Writer Feature Type

The feature type of the Tyler Data & Insights Writer corresponds to the name of the Data & Insights dataset.

When writing to an existing dataset, the dataset name will be updated to match the writer feature type. However, when the writer feature type is identical to the four-four ID of the destination dataset, the name of the dataset will not be modified.