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Using column templates

Column templates are pre-configured column definitions which speed up creating linked data.

This page aims to introduce column template functionality, show you how to make use of it in a qube-config.json configuration file and list common templates you might wish to use yourself.

Templates are currently supported in dimensions, resource attributes and units columns.

Linked-data

If think is your first time using linked data, see the quick start introduction to linking data.

How to use templates

To use a column template in the qube-config.json configuration file set the from_template property on the column definition to one the available templates, for example with a column representing year:

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"Year": {
    "from_template": "year"
}

Overriding template configuration

It is possible to override the configuration inherited from the template; do this by manually specifying individual properties you wish to override within the column definition, e.g. with a column representing year:

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"Year": {
    "from_template": "year",
    "label": "Competition Year"
}

In the above example, we have reused the year template, but given the dimension created the label of Competition Year.

Available templates

The templates are currently in version 1.0; with future development planned. You can see the entire list of the templates inline below or on csvcubed GitHub. The from_template functionality fetches the most recent version of our templates from the web.

Date/Time period template

Template Description Example
year The calendar period of year 2017
half-year The calendar period of half-year (January-June, July-December) 2017-H2
quarter The calendar period of quarter (January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December) 2019-Q3
month The calendar period of month 1995-11
week The ISO-8601 definition of calendar week 2014-W25
day The calendar period of day 1999-12-31
hour The calendar period of hour 2015-11-18T06
minute The calendar period of minute 2015-11-18T06:42
second The calendar period of second 2015-11-18T06:42:32
government-year The UK Government calendar period of year starting in April 2017-2018
government-half-year The UK Government calendar period of half-year starting in April (April-September, October-March) 2010-2011/H1
government-quarter The UK Government calendar period of quarter starting in April (April-June, July-September, October-December, January-March) 2014-2015/Q2
government-week The UK Government calendar period of week as defined at reference.data.gov.uk. 2019-2020/W7
mixed-period Template allows the definition of mixed time periods within a single dimension, e.g. quarter/2020-Q4 (quarter), month/2021-06 (month), day/2019-08-06 (day) See Description

Date/Time instant/interval templates

Template Description Example
gregorian-instant The gregorian-instant expressed in ISO-8601 format 1970-01-01T00:00:00
gregorian-interval The gregorian-interval expressed in ISO-8601 format 1970-01-01T00:00:00/P3D

Geographical area templates

Template Description Example
statistical-geography ONS Geography codes for statistical geographies K02000001

Attribute templates

Template Description Example
observation-status A template which describes the status of the observed value Suppressed

Unit templates

Units used, have to match the terminal part of the URI exactly including case sensitivity.

Template Description Example
qudt-units A template which contains units of measurement http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/PoundSterling