Import from CSV

What is CSV

A Comma-Separated Values (CSV) file is a delimited text file that uses a comma to separate values (from Wikipedia).

How should I format my documents as CSV

RavenDB uses JSON format for storing documents, thus the CSV lines representing documents should have a specific format. There are three types of properties in JSON:

• Primitive: values that are numbers, strings, or booleans
• Nested Object: where the value of the property is a JSON object
• Array: an array of values that can either be primitives, nested objects, or arrays

Let's look at a sample JSON document:

{
    "Name": "Import from CSV",
    "NestedObject": {
        "Name": "Inner Object"
    },
    "ArrayObject": [
        1,
        2,
        3,
        4
    ],
    "@metadata": {
        "@collection": "Samples"
    }
}

The Name property is a primitive and should appear unescaped in the CSV like so:

Name
Import from CSV

The NestedObject property is a nested JSON object and as such should be decomposed into multiple properties - one for each nested property.
The decomposition rule goes as follows:
[the name of the parent property].[name of the inner object property]
like so:

NestedObject.Name
Inner Object

The import process will combine properties with the same prefix back into one JSON object.

The ArrayObject property is an array and as such contains multiple values. These should be escaped as a string like so:

ArrayObject
"[1,2,3,4]"

Last thing we need in order for an import to work is to add the collection property. If we don't, the name of the collection will derive from the CSV file name.

@metadata.@collection
Samples

If we want to import the document with a specific id we need to include an @id property too.

@id
Samples/1-A

The complete CSV line should look like this:

@id,Name,NestedObject.Name,ArrayObject,@metadata.@collection
Samples/1-A,Import from CSV,Inner Object,"[1,2,3,4]",Samples

Now that we've got a valid CSV file we can import it to RavenDB by selecting the target database and navigating to
Settings>Import Data>From CSV file

Import CSV file

After importing the CSV file, the resulting document should look like the document above.