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Working with URIs

URI safe transformation

The URI safe transformation is a process which converts human-friendly text into an identifier which can be used as part of a URI. It is used to generate URIs to identify code list concepts, new units, new measures and new attribute values.

The process

Step Example
The entire label is converted to lower case Picard, Jean-Luc! is transformed to picard, jean-luc!
Characters which are not letters, numbers, _ or / are replaced with a dash, - picard, jean-luc! is transformed to picard--jean-luc-
Multiple dashes are replaced with single dashes picard--jean-luc- is transformed to picard-jean-luc-
A trailing dash is removed if present picard-jean-luc- is transformed to picard-jean-luc

Once this process is complete, the value is appended on to a URI base to make a full URI, for example picard-jean-luc may be appended to http://example.com/definitions/code-lists/enterprise-captains/ to identify Jean-Luc Picard within the code list defining Enterprise captains.

http://example.com/definitions/code-lists/enterprise-captains/picard-jean-luc.

CSV column name safe transformation

The CSV column name safe transformation converts a human-readable column name into an identifier that is safe to use as the name property in a CSV-W column.

The process

Step Example
The entire column name is converted to lower case Confidence interval - lower bound (95%) is transformed to confidence interval - lower bound (95%)
Any characters which are not letters, numbers or _ (underscore) are replaced with a single _ confidence interval - lower bound (95%) is transformed to confidence_interval_lower_bound_95_

The transformed column name can then be safely used by csvcubed in the generation of CSV-W metadata, such as column definitions:

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{
    "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/csvw",
    "@id": "starfleet.csv#dataset",
    "tables": [
        {
            "url": "starfleet.csv",
            "tableSchema":{
                "columns": [
                    {
                        "titles": "Confidence interval - lower bound (95%)",
                        "name": "confidence_interval_lower_bound_95_"
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    ]
}