Add support for arrays of strings / plain lists

[duncandewhurst]

As noted in the docs, arrays of strings (plain lists) are not supported.

Adding support for these would be useful for collecting OCDS data in a spreadsheet, in particular for populating parties/roles field from multiple sheets.

Example: Tenderer details entered in one sheet and suppliers details in another

Tenderers sheet

parties/0/id	parties/0/roles/0
123456	tenderer

Suppliers sheet

parties/0/id	parties/0/roles/0
123456	supplier

Desired output

"parties": [
  {
    "id": "123456",
    "roles": ["tenderer","supplier"]
  }
]

Would it be possible add this functionality?

[Bjwebb]

This should be possible. But, without properly getting my head stuck back into the code, its hard for me to estimate how much work this would be.

[Bjwebb]

Add support for arrays of strings / plain lists

[yolile]

@duncandewhurst actually, I think that this is already supported, you should use ";" as separator and the --schema argument

[duncandewhurst]

Does that work for merging cells from separate sheets into the same string array?

[Bjwebb]

@duncandewhurst No, I don't think so.

[jpmckinney]

@duncandewhurst As a workaround, could you have a parties sheet, and then the other sheets have a dropdown from which users can select one of the parties? This is probably better anyway, to avoid conflicting data across sheets.

[Bjwebb]

I've taken a look into this, and I think it could be done in 2-3 days of my time.

[duncandewhurst]

Thanks for the estimate @Bjwebb

@duncandewhurst As a workaround, could you have a parties sheet, and then the other sheets have a dropdown from which users can select one of the parties? This is probably better anyway, to avoid conflicting data across sheets.

Yes, but this was in the context of minimizing the number of sheets required to enter data to keep the template simple to understand and use.