File formatting

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Input file naming

When uploading files to the TechWolf platform, the following naming conventions should be followed.

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Dynamic files

Dynamic files are files containing entity information at a certain point in time. Dynamic files of the same type, meaning that they represent the same entity, are distinguished by their filename date or time.

The components are of the format prefix_datetime.extension, where:

• prefix is a descriptive name of the file. For all files representing the same entities but on different dates, the prefix should be equal.
• datetime is the date in the format:
  • YYYYMMDD (20011231 for the 31st of December, 2001).
  • YYYYMMDD_HHMMss (20011231_235959 for the 31st of December, 2001 at 23:59:59).
• extension is the file extension. .csv is preferred.

A dynamic filename could look as follows:

TechWolf_Employee_Information_20220101.csv
TechWolf_Learning_Data_20250110_193000.csv

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CSV

CSV (comma-separated values) files are encoded as per the specifications of RFC 4180. In particular:

• Records (i.e. rows) are separated by a line break (CRLF, ‘\r\n’) (cfr. RFC 4180 §2.1)
• Fields within records are separated by commas (’,’) (cfr. RFC 4180 §2.4)
• Each field is enclosed in double quotes (as allowed by RFC 4180 §2.5 - §2.6)
• Double quotes inside fields (which, as detailed above, are already enclosed in double quotes in their entirety) are escaped by being preceded with another double quote.

Additionally, fields that would normally start with a ’=’, ’-’, ’+’ or ’@’ symbol (or a Tab (0x09, \t) or Carriage return (0x0D, \r) character) are escaped with a ’`’ character. This is since many CSV-based programs such as Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc automatically interpret any field that starts with one of these symbols as a formula and try to evaluate it instead of simply showing the field as is (cfr. OWASP - CSV Injection).