Import new entities from Excel results in "No records to show"

Hi, as a newbee my first question on thisforum:

After following a course I was trying toimport data from Excel via "Import New Entities from Excel". For mostdatatabs this worked perfectly. However, importing some of the other tabs resulted in problems. 

Although I do see the appropriate columnheaders, after publishing, no records where shown ("No records toshow"). Strangely, when I left-click the entity, and select edit entitydata/example record I do see one record fully filled in.

Again: this only occurs to some tabs,while other tabs on the same file worked perfectly.

Thanks to this forum I did try somesuggestions, including:

-      Putthe data in a separate excel file

-      Remove  a column that had no data in it

-      Importing one column, try to see the data, if data was there, adding another columns, try to see the data…--> this worked, but with different results. Never managed to exclude the "problem causer". 

As this is the most basic thing to do inOutsystems, I recon I do something wrong, but I can't figure out what. I can'tfind the error-log as well (also suggested on the forum). 

Can anyone help me out?

Hi Coen,

Can you please share the part of the code you´re having an issue so we can try to help you?

Kind regards,

Hugo

Hello Coen, 

Can share the sample excel file. Are you trying to import any foreign keys ?

I had done an excel import for the NorthWind DB, checkout the forge component here

Hope it helps !!! 

Hi :)

I think it could be related to the difference in the type of the attribute between excel and your database. See the type of the attibutes you  have in the column with no records, perhaps your attibutes are boolean, or the the size text are smaller. 

Remember you need to publish for the data to be imported into the entity. And then you can see it in the "View Data". This is because the importing of the data is bound to a timer that will run after you publish the module.

Hope it helps,

Hi Coen,

To have a clear picture of the error you should check the timer logs in Service center for your module.
There you can see the exception/error you're getting when doing the bootstrap.

Typically these kind of errors are due to invalid data types.

Regards,
Paulo Jadaugy

Hugo Antunes wrote:

Tnx for your reply. I'm not sure if I am able to as I am working on the free-version (doing a POC to convince my projectleader to give it a try:-). Can't see where I am able to export the code, and I presume that this can only be done via a full-account. However, I will upload the excel file as suggested by Amal Raj

Amal Raj wrote:

Hi Amal, 

I made a database in MsAccess, having tables that were related to each other. For every table in the database I made an export to Excel, resulting in the attached document (with manipulated data). 

As you can see, the (foreign) key values are included in the export, however, there is no relationship defined between the data in the different excel-tabs. I was planning to define the relations in Outsystems after importing the data. 

I also tried to create one excelfile for the content of every tab in the attached file, but with the same result: No records. 

Is the data causing the problem?

One of the "problemtabs" is tblBSPassetProd

Nélio Dionisio wrote:

Hi! The problem is that no data at all is imported for some tabs. And I tried to exclude some colums but still with the same.

(And concerning the publishing remark: I did this everytime, but still the same message: no records to show. But, the strange thing as mentioned in the question: when I left-click the entity, and select edit entitydata/example record I do see one record fully filled in.

Hello,

I grabbed your excel and created all the logic needed to import the tables and it went well. You can see OML to see if that's what you need, and if that's what you want and don't know how to do it, I'll explain it to you.

Cheers,
Nuno Verdasca

I believe that I find your problem... I've been debugging, and what happens is that you have some types that don't match what is created in the structure, I give you some examples below.

I suggest validating your file, or doing some kind of validation before trying to write the data because of the types used.

Nuno Miguel Verdasca wrote:

This is what I am looking for (!), but how do I get there? How can I do the debugging myself? I do see the "Debugger" option but I can't find an option resulting in an errorlog as above. (And no training is offered on outsystems.com). 

Thanks again!

Hi Coen,

I don't know if you saw my OML.
I have the actions of exporting the tables in timers, which are scheduled for when you publish. I put a breakpoint in excel (see the image below, and put in the action of importing the sheet TblPQfcrs (BootstrapTblPQfcrs) the table I found empty. I start the debugger and then publish again, just change a widget a little up or down, whatever you need to publish later. At the end of it, these timers will start, and will give you these errors that I showed you.

As you can see from the messages, in certain fields it is waiting for one type of variable and another. To validate if what you have is well done, is in excel, leave only one line per sheet with values, and validate that the types are as expected. And so make sure you have your right logic.

In case the correct logic happens, I suggest that you make validations field by field, to prevent the user to enter incorrect types and have these problems. Basically before assigning the excel line to the structure, validate the values and if not what is expected, either convert the value or discard the line, but this is already a business decision.

If you can't, I can give you more help, but it would be helpful to have your own OML with this part of importing the excel file. But I started by doing that test I suggested, where you put all the sheets, with just one row of data.

Cheers,
Nuno Verdasac

Hi Nuno, I hav efound the debugger, but now I am experiencing troubles with that; I entered the breakpoint and started the debugging, but the message "This module does not contain a default entry." appeared in chrome, after that I was noticed that only the client side was going to be debugged. 

For now I stop experiencing with importing data as this was just for a POC experience. You helped me a lot with valueable tips including the debugging and the data-type checkup. 

Now I will first focus on realizing a database and some screens to impress my manager. After that, I will continu trying to implement data directly from Excel, via the help you gave me above. 

tnx again, and all others, thanks as well!

(for the colleague-newbees: the debugging area is in the logic part: switch from data to logic (recht above). There you'll find the Bootstraps for every excel-worksheet you tried to implenent. From here, it should be possible to start the debugger.)

You do not have to thank us, we are here to help each other, and only then will it be possible to grow the community. Any questions, I'm available to help you.