migurski/Dymo — Issue #32: omit NULL population values from output
Author: nvkelso
Created: 2012-02-09 21:54:56+00:00
State: open

When a population (or designated field) lacks a value, the CSV parser interprets that as a NULL value.

Somehow when Dymo is making the cut, it's not dealing with these right. A NULL value should be excluded from the results or stored as a -1 in the output.

Because the output "population" field is now mostly numbers but has a NULL which is a string, the Dymo logic for assigning types to the columns transforms all to string. The population column must be formatted in Number, never String.

Because the MSS in Cascadenik is making numerical comparisons with >=, it fails on these ones.

For example:

NULL POPULATION
North America zoom 7:
7	5955895	Ft. McMurray	Fort McMurray	56.7335	-111.38519	CA	no	AB	8	18	../fonts/Arial Bold.ttf
North America zoom 8:
7	5955895	Ft. McMurray	Fort McMurray	56.7335	-111.38519	CA	no	AB	8	20	../fonts/Arial Bold.ttf
8	6136944	Saanich	Saanich	48.54964	-123.36931	CA	no	BC	8	20	../fonts/Arial Bold.ttf

But somehow this one is okay, even though it is missing population value it doesn't' end up in SHP:
7	5921225	Chicoutimi	Chicoutimi	48.41963	-71.06369	CA	no	QC	8	20	../fonts/Arial Bold.ttf