Can Alteryx read a file with vtl extension?

Question

All,

I needed some help in understanding how some file types are read into alteryx. I received a file from our vendor in a ".vtl" extension format (i am new to this file type) and hoping if i can read this using alteryx and how?

If not, what is the best approach to read this type of file. Any help would be appreciated. thanks

apathetichell · Answer

Apache Velocity Template Language? https://velocity.apache.org/engine/2.0/vtl-reference.html? Your vendor should be able to convert this into .json or something more useful.

danilang · Answer

Hi @S-9

The only reference I can find for .vtl files is an old windows 16-bit Vocabulary Trainer program.  It's not likely that a vendor would be be using this 22 year old program.

Step you can take.

1. Ask your vendor what program created the file.

2. Open the file in notepad.  If its human-readable, i.e. you can read and understand all the strings and numbers with no unprintable box "" characters displayed then check to see if it's a csv, xml, json or flat text(each field takes a constant number of characters/spaces).  If so you can read it in alteryx using the corresponding input format.  If it doesn't appear to be any of these formats try reading it in as a .csv file with \0  as the delimiter.

2. If it's not human readable, i.e. it looks like this

Look at the first 2 characters.  Of they are "PK", then file is probably a zip file, 7z denotes a 7zip file, etc  change the extension to .zip or .7z and try to extract the contents of the archive

Good luck

Dan