Importing advancement to Scoutbook - CSV file provided from BlackPug may fail

If you have issues uploading the BlackPug provided CSV file using the Feature Assistant Chrome Extension, this may be due to the header row not double quoting each column name.
Change:

  • Unit,BSA Member ID,First Name,Middle Name,Last Name,Advancement Type,Advancement,Version,Date Completed,Approved,Awarded

To:

  • “Unit”,“BSA Member ID”,“First Name”,“Middle Name”,“Last Name”,“Advancement Type”,“Advancement”,“Version”,“Date Completed”,“Approved”,“Awarded”

Make sure you use an editor that will not change the End-Of-Line characters. I used Notepad++ on Windows.

@CharlesHoffman if file came out wrong I would send it into BP Support

If you save the csv with Excel, the double quotes will be removed from the first line. We recommend NEVER editing a Black Pug csv with Excel.

The file produced by Black Pug has the required double quotes.

I have no idea what the unit did to get the file, just a Unit Commissioner helping out here.
However, the RFC 4180, does not require the use of quoted fields, even when the field contains spaces. RFC 793, section 2.10 specifically provides guidance to be “liberal in what you will accept from others”.

Perhaps you folks on the Advisory Council could talk to the volunteer who maintains the extension about making a change to be a bit more flexible in this parsing.

That being said, there are so many variants on implementation of CSV, that requiring quoted header columns, but not subsequent data rows is an unusual, but not outrageous requirement.

@CharlesHoffman - not sure what TCP has to do with a csv process.