You can use data stored in a comma-separated values (CSV) text file (.csv) or data stored in a delimited text file (.txt) or GPS Exchange Format file (.gpx) in your ArcGIS Enterprise portal. The following list summarizes how you can use these files and provides links to instructions. The sections after the functionality list provide information on proper formatting and tips for using CSV, TXT, and GPX files in an Enterprise portal.
- Add CSV, TXT, or GPX files as items and share them so others can download the data.
- Add CSV, TXT, or GPX files to Map Viewer Classic. This uses the location information in the file to draw features on the map, and stores the information in the map as a layer. Once the file is added to the map, you can edit the properties of the layer that is created. For example, you can configure pop-ups, change symbols, set the visibility range, enable editing, and remove pop-ups.
- Add a CSV file that doesn't contain location information to a map as a table. This is useful when you want to join nonspatial data—for example, property damage claims related to a recent tornado—to spatial data such as a ZIP Codes layer using the Join Features analysis tool.
- If the CSV file is stored on a publicly accessible website, you can reference it from the map in Map Viewer or in Map Viewer Classic as a layer on the web. If the CSV file contains coordinate information, updates made to the CSV file on the web will appear in the map. If the CSV file contains address or place information, updates made to the CSV file on the web will not be reflected in the map.
- If you have privileges to publish hosted feature layers, you can publish the data in CSV files and share the hosted layer so others can use it.
CSV and TXT files
CSV and TXT files store information in plain text. The first row in the file defines the names for all subsequent fields. In CSV files and TXT files, fields can be separated with a comma, semicolon, or tab. Other separators are not supported.
As no data types are enforced in the file, ArcGIS Enterprise relies on the field names and specific formatting in the fields to interpret the data type that should be applied.
The following sections contain information about supported data formats in CSV and TXT files, and what you need to consider when adding CSV and TXT files to a map.
Location fields in CSV and TXT files
To use CSV or TXT files in your organization, the file must include location fields. Location fields can contain coordinate, address, or place information. The first row in the file must contain the location field names. Addresses can be stored in one or more fields. Coordinates must be in two separate fields.
If the file contains coordinate fields, ArcGIS Enterprise uses these fields to locate the features on the map. ArcGIS Enterprise supports the following coordinate types:
- longitude and latitude*
- latitude and longitude*
- Military Grid Reference System (MGRS)
- United States National Grid (USNG)
In Map Viewer Classic, if the coordinate information cannot be determined or if the file contains address or place information instead, you are prompted to review the location fields and change them if necessary. You are always prompted to review location files in the Content page.
The following location fields are supported:
- Latitude, Longitude
- Lat, Long
- Longitude83, Latitude83
- Longdecdeg, Latdecdeg
- Long_dd, Latdd
- Lng
- Y, X
- Ycenter, Xcenter
- Xcenter, Ycenter
- Point-y, Point-x
- Point-x, Point-y
- MGRS
- USNG
- Address
- City
- State
- ZIP
Date and time in CSV files
Date fields in CSV files are assumed to contain Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) date and time. Dates are assumed to be UTC because the physical location of the server hosting your data can be anywhere in the world. The alternative of storing date and time in a local time zone leads to all sorts of problems, especially if you, or the server hosting your data, move to another time zone.
Whenever a date field is displayed, the date is converted from UTC time into your local time. This is done by querying your computer and asking it for its time zone setting. For example, suppose your computer is set to pacific standard time (PST). PST is eight hours behind UTC—when UTC time is 10:00 AM, it is 2:00 AM PST.
When you publish a hosted feature layer from a CSV file, you can specify the time zone of the data. The specified time zone is used to mitigate the offset because ArcGIS Enterprise assumes date and time data to be in UTC. For example, when a CSV file containing date fields is published with pacific standard time selected as the time zone, all date and time values in your CSV file will have eight hours added as part of the conversion to UTC.
If the date fields in your CSV file contain a date but not a time value, a time value of midnight is assigned when you publish a hosted feature layer. Therefore, if you don't specify a time zone when you publish, your data will be stored with a time value of midnight (UTC). When you view the data, time will be converted to the local time, potentially changing the date. For example, 7/28/2009 0:00 is midnight (UTC) on July 28th, 2009. If you view the data from a computer in pacific standard time zone, the date and time will be displayed as 7/27/2009 16:00. Specifying the time zone when you publish eliminates this offset when viewed in the time zone specified.
The following dates are supported if you publish a hosted feature layer from a CSV file:
| Format | Example |
|---|---|
M/DD/YYYY | 7/28/2009 |
MM/DD/YYYY | 07/28/2009 |
M/DD/YY | 7/28/09 |
MM/DD/YY | 07/28/09 |
YYYY/MM/DD | 2009/07/28 |
YYYY-MM-DD | 2009-07-28 |
YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss | 2009/07/28 17:23:00 |
YYYY/M/DD hh:mm:ss | 2009/7/28 17:23:00 |
YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss | 2009-07-28 17:23:00 |
YYYY-M-DD hh:mm:ss | 2009-7-28 17:23:00 |
Note:
If a field configured as a date field contains an unsupported or invalid format, the field will be created as string data type in the resulting hosted feature layer even if you change the field type before publishing.
If you add a CSV file directly to Map Viewer Classic, the following date formats are loaded as dates, but times do not appear in the table in Map Viewer Classic:
| Format | Example input | Table value |
|---|---|---|
M/DD/YYYY 12-hour time | 7/28/2009 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
MM/DD/YYYY 12-hour time | 07/28/2009 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
M/DD/YY 12-hour time | 7/28/09 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
MM/DD/YY 12-hour time | 07/28/09 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
If you add a CSV file directly to Map Viewer Classic, the following date formats are loaded as string fields exactly as they appear in the CSV file:
| Format | Example input |
|---|---|
M/DD/YYYY | 7/28/2009 |
MM/DD/YYYY | 07/28/2009 |
M/DD/YYYY 24-hour time | 7/28/2009 17:23 |
MM/DD/YYYY 24-hour time | 07/28/2009 17:23 |
M/DD/YY | 7/28/09 |
MM/DD/YY | 07/28/09 |
M/DD/YY 24-hour time | 7/28/09 17:23 |
MM/DD/YY 24-hour time | 07/28/09 17:23 |
Month DD | July 28 |
YYYY/MM | 2009/07 |
YYYY-MM | 2009-07 |
YYYY/MM/DD | 2009/07/28 |
YYYY-MM-DD | 2009-07-28 |
YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss | 2009/07/28 17:23:00 |
YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss | 2009-07-28 17:23:00 |
YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss.s | 2009/07/28 17:23:00.0 |
YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.s | 2009-07-28 17:23:00.0 |
Considerations for publishing date fields in CSV files
- When you specify a time zone when you publish a CSV file, the selected time zone is applied to all date and time values that exist in the CSV file at the time you publish or when overwriting the feature layer.
- If you want to apply a time zone only to individual records, you can specify an offset from UTC for the respective record. For example, if you had a date value of Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5:23 AM+8, that reflects a time zone that is eight hours ahead of UTC. See www.worldtimezone.com for a list of the world's time zones. When the time zone is specified per record in the CSV file, a time zone selected during publishing is applied to those records that do not have an offset specified.
- If you alter date fields in the feature layer you published, including if you alter the hosted feature layer to use the Keep track of who created and last updated features option, the date fields capture values in the editor's local time and convert to UTC with the time offset applied.
- When you export data from a hosted feature layer for which you specified a time zone when you published, no offset is applied. Data is exported in UTC format, which effectively maintains the time zone you selected when publishing.
- Only standard time zones are available in the Time Zone list when publishing. However, daylight saving time is automatically applied if a date value in your CSV file falls within daylight saving time and the selected time zone recognizes daylight saving time.
Date fields in TXT files
When you add a TXT file to Map Viewer Classic, the following date formats are recognized as date fields:
| Format | Example input | Table value |
|---|---|---|
M/DD/YYYY 12-hour time | 7/28/2009 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
MM/DD/YYYY 12-hour time | 07/28/2009 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
MM/DD/YY 12-hour time | 07/28/09 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
Day of week, Month DD, YYYY 12-hour time* | Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
Month DD, YYYY 12-hour time* | July 28, 2009 5:23 PM | July 28, 2009 |
*These date formats are only supported if you delimit fields using tabs or a semicolon.
Considerations for adding CSV and TXT files to a map
Note:
This functionality is currently only supported in Map Viewer Classic (formerly known as Map Viewer). It will be available in a future release of the new Map Viewer.
- The more address fields you include, the more accurate the geocoding results will be. For example, address and ZIP Code will yield better results than just address.
- The address field can contain multiple parts of an address (sometimes called single-line geocoding).
- When you add a CSV file directly to Map Viewer Classic, field types are set automatically and cannot be changed. If you need to change field types, publish your CSV file as a hosted feature layer and define the field types when you publish. When you add a CSV file to Map Viewer, you can define field types.
- If the file contains more spaces than separators in the field names (the first line of the file), you may have trouble adding the file as a layer in a map. Remove extra spaces in the field names and try adding the file again.
- Order and case do not matter (for example, you could have 519 East 86 Street,New York,NY,10028 or 519 east 86 street,new york,ny,10028). However, every row in the file must follow the same order.
- When you add a CSV or TXT file with coordinate information or addresses while signed in, 4,000 rows can be added directly to the map. CSV and TXT files with more than 4,000 rows must be published as a hosted feature layer.
- When you add a CSV or TXT file with addresses as an anonymous user or when you are not signed in, 250 features can be added directly to the map. CSV and TXT files with more addresses than this must be published as a hosted feature layer.
- If the data in the file contains non-English characters—for example, characters specific to the French, Russian, Greek, Japanese, or Arabic alphabets—the file you import must be encoded as Unicode or UTF-8, and not ASCII. If you import an ASCII-encoded file containing non-English characters, it may display attribute values using unexpected characters. You can save a text file as UTF-8 or Unicode in Microsoft Windows. Open the file in a text editor such as Notepad, click File > Save As, and choose UTF-8 or Unicode from the Encoding drop-down menu shown at the bottom of the Save As dialog box.
- If you use a URL to add a CSV file that includes number fields with decimals, the decimal characters in the file should match the format that your system language supports. For example, if your system is set to English, the file should use periods as decimals. If your system is set to French, the file should use commas as decimals.
- When a CSV file containing latitude and longitude information is added to a map, the latitude, longitude coordinates are converted to the spatial reference of the current basemap.
- CSV file items (including those with address information) cannot be added to a map; only the source file on disk or a hosted feature layer published from the CSV file can be added to a map. Similarly, TXT file items cannot be added to a map; only the source file on disk can be.
GPX files
Note:
This functionality is currently only supported in Map Viewer Classic (formerly known as Map Viewer). It will be available in a future release of the new Map Viewer.
You can capture data with a GPS device and use a third-party tool or GPS manufacturer utility to convert the data to a GPX format file. Once you have a GPX file, you can add it to Map Viewer Classic to visualize the data. The following types of data are supported in Map Viewer Classic:
- Waypoints—These are points that the GPS user recorded manually, often specifying a name, to mark locations on the map.
- Tracks—These are points the GPS device recorded automatically at a periodic interval. Tracks are rendered as linear features.
- Routes—These are points the GPS device used to navigate to a specified location. Routes are rendered as linear features.
Considerations for using GPX files
- GPX files can contain multiple layers showing waypoints, tracks, and routes.
- If no symbol is specified or if the symbol isn't part of a symbol set included in Map Viewer Classic, a default waypoint symbol is used.
- You can add GPX files to Map Viewer Classic, but you cannot add them as items through the My Content tab of the content page.