Exporting Data to a Text File

The Export to Text file task exports datasets or other Rulex structures to a text file.

Prerequisites

Additional tabs

The following additional tabs are provided:


Procedure

  1. Drag and drop the Export to Text File task onto the stage.

  2. Connect a task, which contains the data you want to export, to the new task.

  3. Double click the Export to Text File task.

  4. Configure the task options as described in the Export to Text File options table below.

  5. Save and compute the task.

Export to Text File options

Parameter Name

Parametric Options

Description

Data to be exported

reflist

Select what type data you want to export from the list of options.

Possible options are:

  • Association rules (produced by Hierarchical Basket Analysis and Similar Items Detector tasks)

  • Auto regressive models (produced by Auto Regressive task)

  • Clusters (produced by Label Clustering, Projection Clustering and Standard Clustering tasks)

  • Cluster Labels (produced by Label Clustering and Projection Clustering tasks)

  • Datasets (all import, data preparation and data pre-processing tasks)

  • Discretization cutoffs (produced by Discretize task)

  • Frequent itemsets (produced by Frequent Itemsets Mining task)

  • Frequent sequences (produced by Sequence Analysis task)

  • Results (produced by all data analysis tasks)

  • Rules (produced by LLM tasks (Classification, Regression & One-Class), along with Decision Tree and Regression Tree tasks)

  • Models (produced by Logistic, Linear, Neural Networks (Classification and Regression) and SVM (Classification and Regression).

  • PCA eigenvectors (produced by the Principal Component Analysis task)

  • Relevances (produced by classification and regression tasks).

Mode

mode

Select how you want to save the file, either by storing it in a location you will then specify (store), by sending the file as an e-mail (email) or both (all).

If you select to send the file by e-mail, you  must then specify the e-mail address in the Recipients for export via email edit box.

Export URI

uri

Select whether the file will be saved locally (Local File System) or remotely (Http Remote APISharePoint, HDFS, AWS S3, FTP, Azure Storage). If you chose to save the file remotely you must also configure the Remote Connection parameters in the Remote Connections tab.

Directory

dirname

Enter or browse to the directory where the file will be saved.

If you are exporting to a Azure Storage repository you can either:

  • select just the container where you want to save the file as the Directory, and then specify the metadata file name of the blob in the File basename parameter. 
    In this case a blob with the same name as the file will be automatically created for the file.

  • select the container, and manually add the name of the blob, where you want to save the file as the Directory, and then specify the metadata file name of the blob in the File basename parameter. 
    In this case the file will be saved in the specified blob and container.

File basename

basename

Enter a name for the text file you want to export.

If not specified, the name of the file will correspond to the upstream task in the process.

Character coding for output file

filecoding

Select the character encoding system you want to use:

  • UTF-8 (default), UTF-16BE, UTF-16LE writes the text file using the corresponding UTF coding. From version 4.7 of Rulex, UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE are also supported.

  • ASCII exports a file with plain text (without BOM at the start of the file). This may be the preferred option when the files includes a procedure to execute, as it does not contain the three unprintable characters (BOM) at the start of the file.

Add current date and time as prefix

timestampprefix

If selected, the date and timestamp will be added to the start of the file basename as a prefix.

Add current date and time as suffix

timestampsuffix

If selected, the date and timestamp will be added to the end of the file basename as a suffix.

Append data if the file already exists

appendfile

If selected, the exported data will be appended to the file specified in the File basename option, if it already exists; otherwise the original data will be overwritten.

Recipients for export via email (use comma as separator)

recipients

Specify the email addresses where the exported file will be sent, separated by commas.

This option will only be valid if you have selected Send via email or Both in the Mode option.

Export to Text File - File Format options

File extension

filetype

Select the extension type you require for the exported file.

Possible values are tab, csv, txt, data, and tsv (NEW FOR RULEX 4.7.

Data separator

datadelim

Select the data separator which delimits the values of the data to be exported in the output text file, by selecting comma, tabbing, semicolon, space or by specifying another separator.

String for missing values

missingstr

Enter the character (or string of characters) which should be used when there are empty values, for example Null or N/A.

Text delimiter

quotech

Select the symbol used to identify strings. For example, if you select the symbol  as the text delimiter, age will be exported as “age”.

Put names in line

nameline

Specify the line where the attribute names will be saved.

Put types in line

typeline

Specify the line where the attribute types will be saved.

Write covering statistics

(only for Rules)

writecov

If selected covering statistics for rules will be added to the exported text file.

Write error statistics (only for Rules)

writeerr

If selected error statistics for rules will be added to the exported text file.

Write condition covering statistics (only for Rules)

writeccov

If selected covering statistics for conditions will be added to the exported text file.

Write condition error statistics (only for Rules)

writecerr

If selected error statistics for conditions will be added to the exported text file.

Rule format (only for Rules)

ruleformat

Select whether you want the rule data to be expressed as If-then rules (ifthen) or as a matrix (c).