Read and parse a text file

[beperron]

Greetings:

I'm still new to Tableau and trying to find my legs.  Attached is a text file of article records from a bibliographic database.  Each article record contains a number of structured elements that I would like to convert into variables.  I have done the restructuring in R but have a reason to replicate this work in Alteryx.  I'm at the very beginning stage and not able to read in the text data to begin parsing.  Here is the structure and goal.  I reduced the number of variables in my example, but it follows the structure of the full data file that is attached:

TI- The interpretation of dreams

AU- Freud, S.

SU- Psychology

TI- Beyond the pleasure principle

AU- Freud, S.

SU- Psychology

TI- Psychological types

AU- Jung, C.

SU- P

I will ultimately need to generalize my solution to many variables beyond what is in my minimal example (see attached data).  I will also need to combine some fields.  So, here are my specific questions:

1.  Is Alteryx an appropriate / efficient solution for this type of problem?  I can do all the processing in R, but would certainly consider Aleryx if it could be an efficient solution for parsing this kind of data.

2.  What are the steps for reading in text data.  I found a video for downloading text data using the `text input` and `download` tools, but I haven't found a successful strategy for reading in this kind of data file.  

3.  Any general ideas and suggestions for parsing these data would be greatly appreciated -- again, I'm very new to Alteryx and seeing if this is an appropriate tool for various problems.  

Thanks,

Brian

[Federica_FF · Accepted solution]

Hi beperron,

I think you can easily get your result with alteryx.

Txt files can be opened with the Input Tool as .csv with no delimiters. You will get 1 record for each line.

This is one of the many ways to do what you want to do.

In attachment you can find the workflow, so you can play with it.