EXTRACT_METADATA(1)         General Commands Manual        EXTRACT_METADATA(1)

NAME
       extract_metadata - read column metadata from SPSS and Stata binary
       files, and format it as JSON

SYNOPSIS
       extract_metadata input-file output-file

DESCRIPTION
       extract_metadata reads column metadata from existing binary data files,
       so that readstat can produce new, column-compatible binary files from
       CSV input files. Both programs use JSON as a metadata interchange
       format.

       The input-file should be a file with one of the following extensions:

       dta    Stata binary file, version 104 or newer

       sav    SPSS uncompressed binary file

       zsav   SPSS compressed binary file

       In all cases, output-file should end in .json.

EXAMPLE
       Suppose you have a Stata file with last year's survey data, and want to
       produce a compatible Stata file containing this year's survey data.
       First, extract the metadata:

              extract_metadata last-year.dta survey-metadata.json

       Now apply it to this year's data, which is stored in a CSV file:

              readstat this-year.csv metadata.json this-year.dta

       The first line of the CSV file should contain column names which match
       the column names in last-year.dta. If everything went well, your new
       binary data set is now stored in this-year.dta.

OPTIONS
       None.

AUTHOR
       Copyright (C) 2012-2019 Evan Miller, and others where indicated.

                               01 February 2019            EXTRACT_METADATA(1)