Relational data import to Backendless

Hello,

I am wanting import a CSV file to backendless and have it go in to an existing table. I have had a look through the support documents and for someone who is not a coder it is quite confusing. Are there any videos or other resources to help me understand what is needed? This an import aspect of my app, so I need to make sure I understand and can implement it.
I have used other services that allow you to allocate the relationship when importing through a dialogue box so there is no need to code anything. Any help would be appreicated

Hello @Justin_Saunders,

To import a CSV file as a table you should use import logic. More information about it you can find by following link Data Import - Backendless REST API Documentation.

Regards,
Stanislaw

Thank you for your reply, but I don’t want to import data as a table as that seems to be pretty straight forward. I want to import data into an existing table. Every time I import data it creates its own table, which means multiple tables of the same data type. I would like to import data into an existing table to update the data that is already there.
So for example, say I have a table that lists car parts and their prices, and every couple of months we update the prices of all the car parts. I want to be able to create a CSV file in excel containing all the car parts and their new prices and import that into Backendless to update the table of carparts that already exists.
How do I achieve this in a codeless way?

I want to import data into an existing table

You could name file same as table where you want to import.

As for the question about codeless, you could create a page, that accepts csv file. Process it to the list of records using CSV/Excel Plugin. And using Bulk Upsert Operation save them into an existing table
Pay attention to objectId. You must save records with it.

Regards, Dima

Thank you, I have got that to work. Now I am unsure how to up date a table that has some data that is relational to another table. Using the example above that would mean that I have two tables, one named Carparts which has all the details about the car parts (descriptions etc) and one named PartPrices (which has the price for each part) So in the PartPrices table there will be a Name column that will be relational 1:1 to the name in the carparts table. I believe I need to set up the CSV column header of the CSV file I want to import into the PartPrices table to reference the relationship, but I am unsure how to do this.
Hopefully this is clear and someone can explain the process to me.

Hello @Justin_Saunders

I created a simple example with tables “Person” and “City”, with a relation from “Person” to “City”.
Then I exported the “Person” table. There you can see a format with relations.
In csv of “Person” table, I changed the relation column to table “City” to another “objectId” from table “City”. Import the “Person” table csv with the “override checkbox”. The update to another city in the “Person” table was a success.

Regards

Hi Viktor,

Thank you for your reply. That is great, unfortunately I don’t currently have a paid account so am unable to export the tables to see how the column titles should be setup. I was trying to see if I could find something that would show me in layman’s terms how to do it so I can try a few things out before committing to a paid account.

Hi Justin,

This is what the csv file with the Person table from Victor’s example looks like:

"name({""constraints"":[],""type"":""STRING"",""dataSize"":250,""dynamicProps"":{""localData"":{}}})","objectId({""constraints"":[],""type"":""STRING_ID"",""dataSize"":36})","ownerId({""constraints"":[],""type"":""STRING"",""dataSize"":36})","created({""constraints"":[],""type"":""DATETIME""})","updated({""constraints"":[],""type"":""DATETIME""})","city({""constraints"":[],""type"":""RELATION"",""autoLoad"":false,""relatedTable"":""City"",""relationIdentificationColumn"":""objectId"",""dynamicProps"":{""localData"":{}}})"
"Person2","3645DD46-8F2D-4BD7-BA3E-AEF9B20C4860",null,"2023-02-08T10:50:04.564Z",null,"22BA924C-528D-4F68-86D0-757CBF4E21FF"
"Person1","679303AF-6762-47CF-9F26-462664111A40",null,"2023-02-08T10:49:52.230Z",null,"5EE2E7D1-F7E8-4EF4-B846-59F5901C8A89"
"Person3","683C9B41-9EB4-4197-B663-54ABD5489B1A",null,"2023-02-08T10:50:14.616Z",null,"202F94C4-2356-4F82-A7F4-85846939D2BD"

Regards,
Alexander

Thank you,

I think this maybe out of my level of expertise, which really is very beginner. Will need to do some more learning.
Thanks all for your assistance.