Creating Data Packages in JavaScript

April 4, 2018 by Frictionless Data

This tutorial will show you how to install the JavaScript libraries for working with Data Packages and Table Schema, load a CSV file, infer its schema, and write a Tabular Data Package.

# Setup

For this tutorial we will need datapackage-js (opens new window) which is a JavaScript library for working with Data Packages.

Using Node Package Manager (npm), install the latest version of datapackage-js by entering the following into your command line:

npm install datapackage@latest

Run the datapackage --help command to find out all options available to you.

# Creating a package

The basic building block of a data package is the datapackage.json file. It contains the schema and metadata of your data collections.

Now that the node package for working with data packages has been installed, create a directory for your project, and use the command datapackage infer path/to/file.csv to generate a schema for your dataset. To save this file in the directory for editing and sharing, simply append > datapackage.json to the command above, like so:

datapackage infer path/to/file.csv > datapackage.json

This creates a datapackage.json file in this directory.

# Publishing

Now that you have created your Data Package, you might want to publish your data online so that you can share it with others.