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Resource attributes

This page discusses how a Resource attribute column can be defined.

See the Attributes page for general information about attribute columns, including when to use one, and a discussion of the difference between Resource attributes and Literal attributes.

For a detailed look at a Resource attribute column's configuration options, see the Reference table at the bottom of this page.

Basic configuration

Year Location Number of Arthur's Bakes Status
2022 London 35 Provisional
2021 Cardiff 26 Final

To configure a column as a Resource attribute, specify the type field as attribute:

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{
   "$schema": "https://purl.org/csv-cubed/qube-config/v1",
   "title": "The title of the cube",
   "description": "A description of the contents of the cube",
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute"
      }
   }
}

This minimal definition results in:

  • the label field defaulting to the column title (Status in this example);
  • the required field defaulting to false - this means that csvcubed will accept a CSV file with empty cells in the Status column;
  • attribute values automatically being generated from the unique cell values in the Status column (Provisional and Final in this example).

If all cells in the Status column should be populated, set the required field to true. This will prompt csvcubed to flag to the user if there are any blank cells in the Status column:

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{
   "$schema": "https://purl.org/csv-cubed/qube-config/v1",
   "title": "The title of the cube",
   "description": "A description of the contents of the cube",
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "required": true
      }
   }
}

Label, description and definition

Additional details can be associated with the attributes in your data set through the label, description and definition_uri fields.

As mentioned above, the label field will default to the column title unless explicitly configured in the qube-config.json file. In the example below, the Status label is amended to Observation status:

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "label": "Observation status"
      }
   }
}

The description field can be used to provide a longer description of your attribute. If you want to provide information about your methodology, the description field is the preferred place for this.

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "description": "The status of the observed value (Provisional or Final)"
      }
   }
}

The definition_uri fields allows you to refer to external resources that further define an attribute's values:

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "definition_uri": "https://sdmx.org/wp-content/uploads/01_sdmx_cog_annex_1_cdc_2009.pdf"
      }
   }
}

Attribute values

Rather than allowing csvcubed to automatically generate attribute values from the unique cell values in the Status column, the values field can be configured to specify a list of permitted cell values:

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "values": [
            {
               "label": "Provisional"
            },
            {
               "label": "Final"
            }
         ]
      }
   }
}

See the Attribute values page for more information on the configuration options available for the values field.

Inheritance

To reuse or extend an existing attribute, the from_existing field can be configured to refer to a URI defining the attribute to be reused or extended.

To reuse a parent attribute without making any changes to it, set the from_existing field to the URI defining the attribute to be reused:

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "from_existing": "http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/attribute#obsStatus"
      }
   }
}

To extend a parent attribute and create a new attribute from it, set the from_existing field to the URI defining the attribute to be reused, and set the label field to indicate that this is a new child attribute of http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/attribute#obsStatus:

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "from_existing": "http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/attribute#obsStatus",
         "label": "Observation status"
      }
   }
}

Attribute column templates

The Status column could also be configured by using a column template - doing so means that the type, from_existing and label fields will be automatically populated based on the observation-status template:

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Status": {
         "from_template": "observation-status"
      }
   }
}

Reference

This table shows a list of the possible fields that can be entered when configuring a Resource attribute column.

field name description default value
type The type of the column; to configure an attribute column use the value attribute (Required) dimension
label The title of the column (Optional) The capital case of the header in the CSV file with spaces replacing underscores
description A description of the contents of the column (Optional) none
definition_uri A URI of a resource to show how the column is created/managed (e.g. a URI of a PDF explaining a list of attribute values) (Optional) none
required If this boolean value is true csvcubed will flag to the user if there are blank values in this column (Optional) false
values (New Resource Attributes only) If automatically-generated attributes are desired, a boolean value of true is used to signify to csvcubed to create Resource attributes from values in this column; otherwise this should be a list of attribute value objects defining the attributes used in the column. See the Attribute values page for more details. (Optional) none
from_existing The URI of the resource for reuse/extension (Optional) none
from_template Use a column template (Optional) none
describes_observations Associates this attribute with the relevant observation values. This is only necessary for pivoted shape data sets with multiple observation value columns. See the Attributes page for details of how to configure this field. (Optional) none
cell_uri_template (Advanced) (Existing Resource Attributes only) Used to define a template to map the cell values in this column to URIs (Optional) none