Using OpenRefine

The essential OpenRefine guide that takes you from data analysis and error fixing to linking your dataset to the Web

Overview

• Create links between your dataset and others in an instant
• Effectively transform data with regular expressions and the General Refine Expression Language
• Spot issues in your dataset and take effective action with just a few clicks

In Detail

Data is supposed to be the new gold, but how can you unlock the value in your data? Managing large datasets used to be a task for specialists, but you don’t have to worry about inconsistencies or errors anymore. OpenRefine lets you clean, link, and publish your dataset in a breeze.

Using OpenRefine takes you on a practical tour of all the handy features of this well-known data transformation tool. It is a hands-on recipe book that teaches you data techniques by example. Starting from the basics, it gradually transforms you into an OpenRefine expert.

This book will teach you all the necessary skills to handle any large dataset and to turn it into high-quality data for the Web. After you learn how to analyze data and spot issues, we’ll see how we can solve them to obtain a clean dataset. Messy and inconsistent data is recovered through advanced techniques such as automated clustering. We’ll then show extract links from keyword and full-text fields using reconciliation and named-entity extraction.

Using OpenRefine is more than a manual: it’s a guide stuffed with tips and tricks to get the best out of your data.

What you will learn from this book

• Import data in various formats
• Explore datasets in a matter of seconds
• Apply basic and advanced cell transformations
• Deal with cells that contain multiple values
• Create instantaneous links between datasets
• Filter and partition your data easily with regular expressions
• Use named-entity extraction on full-text fields to automatically identify topics
• Perform advanced data operations with the General Refine Expression Language

Approach

The book is styled on a Cookbook, containing recipes – combined with free datasets – which will turn readers into proficient OpenRefine users in the fastest possible way.

Who this book is written for

This book is targeted at anyone who works on or handles a large amount of data. No prior knowledge of OpenRefine is required, as we start from the very beginning and gradually reveal more advanced features. You don’t even need your own dataset, as we provide example data to try out the book’s recipes.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Diving Into OpenRefine
Chapter 2: Analyzing and Fixing Data
Chapter 3: Advanced Data Operations
Chapter 4: Linking Datasets
Appendix: Regular Expressions and GREL