TODO: create native generate sav from struct
Repository based from: https://bitbucket.org/bergenquete/xml2sav
Repository based from: https://github.com/j0ran/xml2sav
Xml2sav is a program that will convert a custom xml file to a binary SPSS file. SPSS is a computer program used for statistical analysis (http://www.spss.com). Formats like csv, excel or databases, when imported into SPSS, do not convey all information about the variables. And also the number of rows or columns is often limited. This program solves those problems. It is originally developed for a web based questionnaire system. The questionnaire data is exported to a xml file and can then be converted to SPSS sav files using xml2sav. Xml2sav is released under the GNU General Public License, see COPYING for more information.
Xml2sav doesn't need to be installed. On windows you can start the program to let it associate itself to files with the .xsav extension. To do this double click on the program after downloading. After that to convert a file using xml2sav, just double click on the data file, which should have an .xsav extension, and an console window will pop up displaying messages indicating how the conversion process went. The result should be that one or more binary SPSS files with the .sav extension have been created. Also a log file will be generated containing any messages about the conversion process. Please check the log file to see if everything went as expected.
On non windows systems xml2sav can be used as a command line program.
Usage: xml2sav [options] <file.xsav> Options: -csv convert to csv -nolog don't write log to file -pause pause and wait for enter after finsishing -single don't determine lengths of string variables
The input xml file has an spss element in the root. It can contain multiple sav elements. Each sav element will generate an SPSS sav file. So it is possible to put multiple sav files in one xml file. A sav element contains a dict element describing the dictionary (columns) and multiple case elements that define the cases (rows). An XML Schema definition can be found in the source code.
Example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<spss>
<sav name="example">
<dict>
<var type="numeric" name="id" decimals="0" measure="scale"/>
<var type="numeric" name="finished" decimals="0" measure="nominal">
<label value="1">True</label>
<label value="0">False</label>
</var>
<var type="datetime" name="start_time"/>
<var type="string" name="remote_ip" measure="nominal"/>
<var type="numeric" name="person.age" decimals="0" measure="scale" label="What is your age?" default="18"/>
<var type="string" name="person.name" measure="nominal" label="What is your name?"/>
<var type="numeric" name="frequency" decimals="0" measure="ordinal">
<label value="1">Never</label>
<label value="2">Sometimes</label>
<label value="3">Regulary</label>
<label value="4">Often</label>
</var>
<var type="date" name="person.dateofbirth" measure="scale"/>
</dict>
<case>
<val name="id">16333</val>
<val name="finished">1</val>
<val name="remote_ip">1.2.3.4</val>
<val name="start_time">05-Mar-2009 13:13:37</val>
<val name="person.age">45</val>
<val name="person.name">Test Person 1</val>
<val name="frequency">2</val>
<val name="person.dateofbirth">31-Jan-1971</val>
</case>
<case>
<val name="id">16334</val>
<val name="finished">0</val>
<val name="remote_ip">1.2.3.5</val>
<val name="person.age">45</val>
<val name="person.dateofbirth">4-Feb-2007</val>
</case>
<case>
<val name="id">16335</val>
<val name="finished">0</val>
<val name="remote_ip">1.2.3.5</val>
<val name="person.dateofbirth">4-Feb-2007</val>
</case>
</sav>
</spss>When a defined variable is not set in a case, it will be marked as missing in the resulting SPSS sav file.
Dates are in the format dd-mmm-yyyy, with the mmm being the abbreviated name of the month in English. Datetimes are of the format dd-mmm-yyyy hh:mm:ss.