man Catmandu::Introduction (3): a Catmandu HOW TO

Introduction

Catmandu is a data processing toolkit developed as part of the LibreCat <http://librecat.org> project. Catmandu provides a command line client and a suite of tools to ease the import, storage, retrieval, export and transformation of data. For instance, to transform a CSV file into JSON use the command:

    $ catmandu convert JSON to CSV < data.json

Or, to store a YAML file into an ElasticSearch database type:

    $ catmandu import YAML to ElasticSearch --index_name demo < test.yml

To export all the data from an Solr search engine into JSON type:

    $ catmandu export Solr --url http://localhost:8983/solr to JSON

With Catmandu one can import OAI-PMH records in your application:

    $ catmandu convert OAI --url http://biblio.ugent.be/oai --set allFtxt

and export records into formats such as JSON, YAML, CSV, XLS, RDF and many more.

Catmandu also provides a small scripting language to manipulate data, extract parts of your dataset and transform records. For instance, rename fields with the 'move_field' command:

    $ catmandu convert JSON --fix 'move_field(title,my_title)' < data.json

In the example above, we renamed all the 'title' fields in the dataset into the 'my_title' field.

One can also work on deeply nested data. E.g. create a deeply nested data structure with the 'move_field' command:

    $ catmandu convert JSON --fix 'move_field(title,my.deeply.nested.title)' < data.json

In this example we moved the field 'title' into the field 'my', which contains a (sub)field 'deeply', which contains a (sub)field 'nested'.

Catmandu was created by librarians for librarians. We process a lot of metadata especially library metadata in formats such as MARC, MAB2 and MODS. With the following command we can extract data from a marc record and to store it into the title field:

    $ catmandu convert MARC --fix 'marc_map(245,title)' < data.mrc

Or, in case only the 245a subfield is needed write:

    $ catmandu convert MARC --fix 'marc_map(245a,title)' < data.mrc

When processing data a lot of Fix commands could be required. It wouldn't be very practical to type them all on the command line. By creating a Fix script which contains all the fix commands complicated data transformations can be created. For instance, if the file "myfixes.txt" contains:

     marc_map(245a,title)
     marc_map(100a,author.$append)
     marc_map(700a,author.$append)
     marc_map(020a,isbn)
     replace_all(isbn,'[^0-9-]+','')

then they can be executed on a MARC file using this command:

    $ catmandu convert MARC --fix myfixes.txt < data.mrc

Fixes can also be turned into executable scripts by adding a bash 'shebang' line at the top. E.g. to harvest records from an OAI repository write this fix file:

     #!/usr/bin/env catmandu run
     do importer(OAI,url:"http://lib.ugent.be/oai")
        add_to_exporter(.,JSON)
     end

Run this (on Linux) by setting the executable bit:

     $ chmod 755 myfix.fix
     $ ./myfix.fix

To experiment with the Fix language you can also run the catmandu Fix interpreter in an interactive mode:

     $ catmandu run
     Catmandu 0.95 interactive mode
     Type: \h for the command history
     fix > add_field(hello,world)
     ---
     hello: world
     ...
     fix >

Catmandu contains many powerfull fixes. Visit <http://librecat.org/Catmandu/#fixes-cheat-sheet> to get an overview what is possible.

Documentation

For more information read our documentation pages <http://librecat.org/Catmandu/> and blog <https://librecatproject.wordpress.com/> for a complete introduction and update into all Catmandu features.

In the winter of 2014 an Advent calendar tutorial was created to provide a day by day introduction into the UNIX command line and Catmandu:

<https://librecatproject.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/day-1-getting-catmandu/>

If you need extra training, our developers regulary host workshops at library conferences and events: <http://librecat.org/events.html>

Installation

There are several ways to get a working version of Catmandu on your computer. For a quick and demo installation visit our blog <https://librecatproject.wordpress.com/get-catmandu/> where a VirtualBox image is available containing all the Catmandu modules, including ElasticSearch and MongoDB.

On our website <http://librecat.org/Catmandu/> we provide installation instructions for:

 * Debian
 * Ubuntu Server
 * CentOS
 * openSUSE
 * OpenBSD
 * Windows

and even a generic installation using Docker <https://www.docker.com/>: <https://hub.docker.com/r/librecat/catmandu/>.

Open Source

Catmandu software published at https://github.com/LibreCat/Catmandu is free software without warranty, liabilities or support; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 or any later version. Every contributor is free to state her/his copyright.

Developers & Support

Catmandu has a very active international developer community. We welcome all feedback, bug reports and feature enhancement.

Join our mailing list to receive more information: "[email protected]"

Are a developer and want to contribute to the project? Feel free to submit pull requests or create new Catmandu packages!

Kudos