File formats

The HXL Proxy — and tools that depend on it, like HDX's Quick Charts and Data Check, or IFRC's IFRC Go — can read HXL-hashtagged data in three basic formats:

• an Excel XLS or XLSX workbook — it will use the first sheet that contains HXL hashtags (unless you supply a sheet number)
• a delimited text file (CSV) — fields may be separated by commas, tabs, semicolons, colons,or vertical bars (you must use ASCII or UTF-8 character encoding, or have your HTTP web server specify the correct encoding)
• a JSON file — the Proxy supports two different JSON data formats

The Proxy is smart enough to open those files in a number of convenient ways:

• a direct download link for a CSV, Excel, or JSON file
• a link to the web page for an HDX dataset — the Proxy will negotiate with HDX to open the first resource (this is useful for datasets that keep adding new releases of data)
• a link to a Google Sheet — the Proxy will convert a tab to CSV and then read it; it will use a specific tab if included in the link, or default to the first tab otherwise
• a Google Drive sharing link — the Proxy will resolve the link to find the direct download for the resource
• a Dropbox sharing link — the Proxy will convert it to a direct-download link