make information computable
elev.at was initially created out of the need to consume the kinds of data sets published by governments, such as the NYC Data Mine, data.gov, DataSF, data.australia.gov.au and others. Read more about it here.
The goal of elev.at is to make all published information that is hard to process by machines, easily computable.
The API can convert HTML Tables, Text files (CSV, tab delimited), and Excel spreadsheets (XLS files), to XML.
API
Convert HTML Table to XML
| Parameter | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| htmltable | λ | URL of HTML page that contains the TABLE to convert |
| header | T if the table's first row contains column headers. Ommit parameter if first row to be considered data | |
| index | Zero-based index of table to convert (i.e. nth table in HTML page). Defaults to 0 |
| Data | Additional Parameters | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Wikipedia: Illnesses caused by improper nutrient consumption | index, header |
| http://elev.at/lift?table=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition&index=3&header=t | ||
| 2. | S&P Home Price Index (1991 - 2009) - published by UCLA Statistics | (none - all defaults) |
| http://elev.at/lift?table=http://wiki.stat.ucla.edu/socr/index.php/SOCR_Data_Dinov_091609_SnP_HomePriceIndex | ||
Convert XLS to XML
| Parameter | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| xls | λ | URL of Excel spreadsheet to convert to XML, or of a ZIP file that contains an XLS file to convert |
| zipentry | Name of XLS file to process, as it appears in the ZIP archive | |
| sheetnumber | Zero-based index of sheet to convert. Defaults to 0 | |
| headerrow | Zero-based index of header row. Defaults to 0 | |
| startrow | Zero-based index of first data row. Defaults to the row after headerrow. | |
| endrow | Zero-based index of last data row. Recommended parameter, but if omitted, Elev.at will automatically determine the last row to include | |
| startcol | Zero-based index of the column at which to start. If omitted, Elev.at determines automatically based on spreadsheet content | |
| endcol | Zero-based index of column at which to end. If omitted, Elev.at automatically determines based on spreadsheet content |
Convert Text to XML
| Parameter | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| text | λ | URL of text file to convert to XML, or of a ZIP file that contains a text file to convert |
| zipentry | Name of text file to process, as it appears in the ZIP archive | |
| delimiter | Field separator. Acceptable values: comma, tab. Default is comma. |
| Data | Additional Parameters | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | NYC Data Mine - Selected Facilities and Program Sites | zipentry |
| http://elev.at//lift?text=http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/download/biggapps/DCP_nyc_facilities_text_001.zip&zipentry=Agoper.txt | ||
| 2. | Vancouver - School Data | (none - all defaults) |
| http://elev.at/lift?text=http://data.vancouver.ca/download/csv/schools.csv | ||
| 3. | Australia - Public Internet Locations (Victoria) | (none - all defaults) |
| http://elev.at/lift?text=http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/images/stories/datasets/publicweb.csv | ||
Cross-domain
Elev.at implements the JSON/P mechanism for delivering output directly to the browser so you need not proxy the results via a server. Add a callback parameter on to your lift request to activate JSON/P output. See here for an example.
Usage guidelines
- Although elev.at can automatically determine the dimensions of the XLS data you wish to convert (headerrow, endrow, startcol, and endcol) this does not always work 100% - we're constantly learning how to predict more accurately. So if elev.at doesn't return with the data you want the first thing to do is to make sure you specify these parameters.
- Elev.at does conversion real-time. To improve overall performance, cache the XML results in your app and only re-request when you think your cache is stale.
Interesting Data Sets
You can tag datasets that are known to be compatible with the API as elevat_dataset on Delicious.
