Inputs/Output should have the option to read/write a compressed file (ZIP or GZIP)

Both Input and Output tools should have the ability to read or write any file type from/into standard compression types (ZIP and GZIP). This would be helpful when managing large files.

Implemented

Data Connectors

Category Input Output

Comments

aakarsh_kalra

Totally agreed. We have huge GZIP files and in order to process them i first need to unzip them manually and then have Alteryx read and process it.

If we can read zipped files or unzip/zip a file within the module would be really helpful.

adrian_loong

That would greatly assist us as well. We have huge gzip files which contain xml that need to be read in and processed . It would be good to have this functionality without using another external application or run command

PoornimaF

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your feedback on this. We have received this feature request from numerous customers and will be looking into making it part of an upcoming release. In the meantime, you can unzip compressed files by using unzip.exe in the Run Command tool. An illustration on how this tool can be utilized can be found on our CTO's blog post.

Thanks,
Poornima Farrar, Product Manager

_aaron_walters

It would also be great to have this for pushing to S3 buckets as well.

lanny_newville

This would be an awesome option. I currently download 24 hours worth of computer log files with millions of entries from a service provider daily. The ability to pull directly from a .gzip file would not only save time but hdd space as well.

JCR

This is under review - reference F401.

Please keep updating the thread with the formats you'd like us to support.

RyanNewsome

Hopefully these macros will help some people for the time being, to output to a zipped csv and also send the zipfile to S3 buckets http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/output-to-CSV-ZIP-S3-bucket-SFTP-macros-attached/m-p/9613/highlight/true#M1590

ARich

bzsurf03

I hope to see this functionality in the future. For now I will handle with R.

ARich

This functionality is available for ZIP files via the input tool.

RyanNewsome

Thanks for confirmation Alex.

Is adding this functionality to the output tool in the pipeline?

CristonS

How about .gz files? Is that on the roadmap anywhere? Thanks, @ARich

ARich

Hi @RyanNewsome,

Sorry I missed your original post. Currently, we do not have outout to zip planned. Most of our use cases centered around the need for inputting zip files as opposed to outputting them. If we get enough demand, we'll re-evaluate.

Hi @CristonS,

We do not currently have .gz files on the roadmap.

Best,

Alex

RyanNewsome

Hi @ARich ,

Not a worry. I really do think there is already enough demand for this though. Outputting files to zip/.gz/tar etc. is a very common interface requirement. If RTools was installed as part of the Alteryx predictive installation, I'm sure the Alteryx wizards could create some nice R-macro based tools?

Hi @CristonS

http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/output-to-CSV-ZIP-S3-bucket-SFTP-macros-attached/m-p/27220#M4918

Here is a macro that alllows 'output to zip'

A newer improved version will be coming shortly, with the SFTP part fixed and other enhancements.

But from your comment I am presuming you are more interested in decompressing a gzip file instead of compressing to gzip. If you have the time, install R tools and copy the gzip.exe file to the Alteryx folders. You should be able to write a simple R script to decompress a gzip file

http://www.inside-r.org/packages/cran/r.utils/docs/gzip shows how to use. Please share on the community forums if you create anything?

AndyMoncla

I would love to have the ability to read a .gz file. Thanks.

JessicaS

Please move further discussion on GZIP support over to

http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Product-Ideas/Support-for-GZIP-gz-compressed-files-in-input-tool-both-in/idi-p/25623