The following two files contain the data and application settings for StatPlanet and StatTrends:

• Settings file (settings.csv or settings.txt)
• Data file (data.csv or data.txt)

Settings file

The setting.csv file consists of three parts:
 

1. Map coordinates:

The heading “MAP”, followed by at least one line providing the startup coordinates of the map
(in the order - X coordinate, Y coordinate, zoom level).

Additional map regions can be optionally defined in the same format. The columns 'COLOR' and 'URL' are optional. The column 'START (ISO) CODES' is required when specifying the areas which need to be included for custom map regions. Please see the user guide for more details.
 

2. Settings:

The heading “SETTINGS”, followed by a list of settings, with the first column containing the variable name and the second column the value for this variable. The order of the variables does not matter. This section also includes the interface and help text.
 

3. Names: (optional)

   The heading “NAMES”, followed by a list of country or region names. The order of the names should be the same as the order of the corresponding country / region / variable codes in the data.csv files (but transposed vertically rather than horizontally). This section is optional, and if left out the country / region / variable names will be the same as the country / region / variable codes.

Data file

The data.csv file consists of 11 columns containing category names, indicator names and meta information, followed by X number of columns for the map countries / regions (where X corresponds to the number of countries or regions in your map, or variables in the case of StatTrends). Columns 1, 2 and 3 contain the Category names, Years and Indicator names respectively. Columns 4 to 11 are optional and can be left blank (for more details please see the user guide).

The most important columns are columns 1 to 3, which need to be structured as shown in the table below. Please note that as of StatPlanet v 3.0 there is no longer a 'GLOBAL' column which used to be the first column in the data file.

It is important to note that the following rules need to be adhered to in structuring the data:

Rule 1: Years or other time periods must be in order from highest to lowest.

Rule 2: Each category can have its own list of indicators. However, ‘within’ a category, the list of indicators must be exactly the same for each year.

Rule 3: Spacing (empty cells in white) between the different categories, years and indicators need to be maintained as shown above. See also the included example data set.
(i.e. empty spaces between each category / empty spaces between each year / empty space between each list of indicators.)

 *Prior to StatPlanet version 3.0 the column header 'YEAR' was used rather than 'TIME'.