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Literal attributes

This page discusses how a Literal 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 Literal attribute column's configuration options, see the Reference table at the bottom of this page.

Basic configuration

Year Location Average customer spend 95% CI (lower bound) 95% CI (upper bound)
2022 London 7.85 6.54 8.06
2021 Cardiff 6.98 6.03 7.52

To configure a column as a Literal attribute, specify the type field as attribute and include the data_type field in the column configuration details:

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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": {
      "95% CI (lower bound)": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "decimal"
      },
      "95% CI (upper bound)": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "decimal"
      }
   }
}

This minimal definition results in:

  • the label field defaulting to the column titles (95% CI (lower bound) and 95% CI (upper bound) in this example);
  • the required field defaulting to false - this means that csvcubed will accept a CSV file with empty cells in the 95% CI (lower bound) and 95% CI (upper bound) columns;
  • the data_type being set as decimal. This indicates that the values of 95% CI (lower bound) and 95% CI (upper bound) should be decimals. Built-in data types are available in the CSV-W standard for a range of numeric, text, date/time and other values.

If all cells in the 95% CI (lower bound) and 95% CI (upper bound) columns should be populated, set the required field to true. Doing so will prompt csvcubed to flag to the user if there are any blank cells in these columns:

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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": {
      "95% CI (lower bound)": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "decimal",
         "required": true
      },
      "95% CI (upper bound)": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "decimal",
         "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 95% CI (lower bound) label is amended to 95% confidence interval (lower bound):

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "95% CI (lower bound)": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "decimal",
         "label": "95% confidence interval (lower bound)"
      }
   }
}

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": {
      "95% CI (lower bound)": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "decimal",
         "description": "The lower bound of the 95% confidence interval for the observed value",
      }
   }
}

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

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "95% CI (lower bound)": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "decimal",
         "definition_uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval"
      }
   }
}

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. For example, suppose a new attribute column was added to the table above to record a comment against the Average customer spend value:

Year Location Average customer spend 95% CI (lower bound) 95% CI (upper bound) Comment
2022 London 7.85 6.54 8.06 Store closed for renovations 01/05/2022-14/05/2022
2021 Cardiff 6.98 6.03 7.52 
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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Comment": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "string",
         "from_existing": "http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/attribute#comment"
      }
   }
}

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#comment:

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{ ...
   "columns": {
      "Comment": {
         "type": "attribute",
         "data_type": "string",
         "from_existing": "http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/attribute#comment",
         "label": "Additional comments"
      }
   }
}

Reference

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

field name description default value
type The type of the column; to configure an attribute column use the value attribute (Required) dimension
data_type The XML data type of the contents of the column. If this is provided it becomes a Literal attribute column (Optional) none
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
from_existing The URI of the resource for reuse/extension (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