Have option to remove group names in ODK briefcase export

Ideas
1

What is the general goal of the feature?
Current behavior is to prefix all exported nodes with parent groups, separated by a hyphen. This feature provides the ability to remove group names (i.e. do not include them) as prefixes for nodes in CSV export. There should be a CLI option and a GUI toggle. Leave the default behavior so that ODK Briefcase works as is, but add the option to turn it off.

What are some example use cases for this feature?
The motivation for this is that often times, ODK data is analyzed in Stata. Stata has a hard 32-character limit for column names, and it truncates column names on import. Group names are automatically prepended by ODK Briefcase on CSV export, and I think this should be behavior that is optional.

What can you contribute to making this feature a reality?
Code where group names are prepended is here: https://github.com/opendatakit/briefcase/blob/v1.8.0/src/org/opendatakit/briefcase/util/ExportToCsv.java#L216

2

@jpringle We've submitted this idea (along with a direct export to Stata) as part of our Google Summer of Code application. If we get a student, would you be willing to try out pre-release builds and offer feedback? The caveat is that the work for this would start in early May.

1 Like
3

@yanokwa Sure! I would be willing to test out pre-release builds.

1 Like
4

There are R packages that handle this but +1 for this as a feature you could set on export for example in Briefcase

5

Hi, all! We've released Briefcase 1.13, which includes a new CLI param to remove group names from the header line in CSV exports. Check it out here: ODK Briefcase v1.13

2 Likes