📗 Field Types. Data Formatting and Normalization

This article applies only to Parsio’s template-based parser.

Data normalization is the process of structuring parsed data. You may want to eliminate unwanted spaces and special characters, convert comma-separated numbers to decimal-separated etc.

This can be done using Field Types. Parsio supports 9 built-in types:

Multi-line Text
Single-line Text
Raw ("Keep as Source")
URL
Email
Downloadable (External) Document
Date
Time
Date and Time
Number
Address

Note that these settings are defined at the Mailbox level, e.g. all the templates in the mailbox will share the same types for the same fields.

1. Multi-line Text

The Multi-line Text type comes with a couple of post-processing operations:

Remove all the HTML tags from the found text.
Decode HTML entities to their corresponding characters (e.g. & will become & etc).

Example: an anchor tag <a href="https://example.com" target="_blank">Click Here</a> will be converted to "Click Here".

This field type preserves paragraphs.

2. Single-line Text

The Single-line Text type is similar to Multi-line Text but removes all the line breaks keeping the value as a single paragraph.

3. Keep as Source

The Raw field type ("Keep as source") simply keeps the found value "as is" without any additional formatting.

4. URL

This field type allows you to to extract "hidden" URL addresses from links and buttons. Alternatively, you can extract it from the source code (Raw tab).

5. Email

Similarly to the URL field type, it allows you to to extract "hidden" email addresses from links and buttons. Alternatively, you can extract it from the source code (Raw tab).

6. Downloadable (External) Document

The Downloadable document allows to parse external documents. If the parsed value is a valid URL, Parsio will try to download the linked document: PDF file, HTML page, Excel, CSV, DOCX etc.

The file must be publicly available, e.g. you should not enter login / password to access it.

7-9. Date, Time, Date and Time

Dates and times come in a variety of formats into your mailbox. Sometimes the date format may be quite ambiguous to parse:

11/07/2022. In different countries this can be either the 11th of July or the 7th of November.

To disambiguate that situation, Parsio allows you to specify the input and output format for your Date, Time and DateTime field types. You can find these settings under your Mailbox > Settings page:

If you leave the input fields empty, Parsio will try to "guess" the correct date & time formats. In the case where Parsio can't parse a field, its value will be kept unchanged.

Date Formats

Weekday

d 0..6
dd Su
ddd Sun
dddd Sunday

Year

YY 13
YYYY 2013

Month

M 1..12 (Jan is 1)
Mo 1st..12th
MM 01..12 (Jan is 1)
MMM Jan
MMMM January

Quarter

Q 1..4
Qo 1st..4th

Day

D 1..31
Do 1st..31st
DD 01..31

Day of year

DDD 1..365
DDDo 1st..365th
DDDD 001..365

Week of year

w 1..53
wo 1st..53rd
ww 01..53

Time Formats

24h hour

H 0..23
HH 00..23

12h hour

h 1..12
hh 01..12

Minutes

m 0..59
mm 00..59

Seconds

s 0..59
ss 00..59

AM/PM

a am
A AM

Timezone offset

Z +07:00
ZZ +0730

Unix timestamp: X
Millisecond Unix timestamp: x

Here are some examples:

YYYY-MM-DD 2014-01-01
dddd, MMMM Do YYYY Friday, May 16th 2014
dddd [the] Do [of] MMMM Friday the 16th of May
hh:mm a 12:30 pm

10. Number

The Number format removes any spaces and special characters from the parsed value. Additionally, you can convert comma-separated numbers to decimal-separated and vice versa. You can find these settings under your Mailbox > Settings page:

In the case where Parsio can't parse a numeric field, its value will be kept unchanged.

11. Address

The Address field format converts a freeform text address to a structured format.

Example. Let's say you captured the following address: 1 Piazza del Colosseo 00184 Roma.

Parsio will store it as a field with multiple properties:

If, however, Parsio is unable to convert the parsed text in a structured address format, the resulted value will be: