LateRooms CSV file - massive!

[Alien]

Just starting with Late Rooms - I have their England hotels .csv file (around 40mb) which I want to import into MySQL and then manipulate etc. However I just need certain areas of it, not the entire file - e.g. hotels in Birmingham.

Can anyone advise how I can extract just the lines (e.g. for Birmingham) I need from the file and save to make a new file for the region I'd like which is much smaller and easier to use?

I wonder why it's not possible to download an area specific or customised CSV file from them - all or nothing?!!

Thanks everyone.

 

[nick-harper]

You could do it in PHP.

if ($city == 'Birmingham') {
mysql code to enter into db }
else
{ echo 'Was not a brummy, so not added to the db'; }

 

[Admin]

Open it in Excel and filter it

 

[Alien]

Thanks all!

My Excel skills are basic, lol. I never liked the prog!

Managed to use the sort command to make it alphabetical in the city portion, then removed the not required rows. Sorted and imported to MySQL.

 

[Admin]

Format the data as a table in Excel, which adds filter options to every column ;-)

 

[Alien]

Ok silly question time! DOH, lol!

Does anyone know if a manual link with my affiliate ID needs to be added to the booking links or is my affiliate link already included within the CSV file if visitors click through?

Thanks.

PS: Aha, just noticed in the Hotel URL link in the CSV file, e.g:

http://www.laterooms.com/en/p[[PARTNERID]]/hotel-reservations/75864_courtneys-of-gynn-square.aspx

- There's a [[PARTNERID]] section, which I presume you need to add an affiliate ID? Does this need manually altering/editing in?

 

[nick-harper]

In PHP you can do the following

$afflink = str_replace("YOUR PARTNER ID","[[PARTNERID]]",$linkvariablefromdb);
echo $afflink;

This will do it on the fly

 

[chippyb]

Im Having issues importing my edited csv to mysql, I think it might be the fact i only have excel 2003 as when i go to save the file when I have got rid of all the hotels and citys I dont need it says some of the features will be lost if i save as a csv file, i ignored it and continue but when im importing it fails saying there is a eroor in my sql query

 

[Alien]

I'm using an import script now, after creating the MySQL DB, I empty the table, upload the CSV file, works nice and updates all hotels, etc, etc.

It's a steep learning curve though isn't it?!

PS: I have 2002 Excel, works ok here.

 

[chippyb]

did you ever get that message then when you tried to save the file?

 

[Alien]

Yes, it says features might be lost etc, but it hasn't affected things.

I'm using 'old style' CSV with commas, try that. Create the database first for old style first then upload CSV file.

 

[chippyb]

right back to google i go then as i have no idea lol

 

[chippyb]

now i get thi Invalid field count in CSV input on line 3.

 

[chippyb]

ah think i have sorted it

 

[retired_member34]

Try Google Refine - designed for this sort of thing and is very easy to use.

 

[chippyb]

i have decieded again i have no idea what im doing lol

 

[ribble-valley]

Laterooms CSV/XML expert on hand

p.s. watch out for character encoding issues when handling the CSV feed

 

[Alien]

p.s. watch out for character encoding issues when handling the CSV feed

Yeah, I've noticed some issues with certain characters.

For instance, the £ sign sometimes will be displayed as £7.00 etc.

 

[ribble-valley]

I use notepad++ to open the file, then select correct UTF-8 encoding, save, upload

 

[Alien]

I use notepad++ to open the file, then select correct UTF-8 encoding, save, upload

Thanks for the tip, appreciated. I'll install notepad++ on here (got it on my other machines) and try that.