Importing trap check data in bulk

I check several of my traps every day. In the event I have a catch - infrequently - I enter it into the trap.nz database on that day. If there’s no catch I don’t do anything - entering data every day would just take up too much time.

A null result when a trap is checked is an important piece of information and should be entered. What I’d like to do, once a month, is to enter all these null results for all my daily-checked traps in one go. I envisage preparing something like a .csv file with all the relevant information which I upload to trap.nz and have imported into the database. Is this possible? From some of the comments on this forum I get the impression it might be - although it may be necessary to be a project administrator? But I’ve searched the help files without much success (possibly because I’m not an administrator?). Can some one tell me whether it is possible and, if so, how to do it and what format the data input needs to be?

Kia ora,

Thanks for getting in touch. You’re correct - it is possible to upload a CSV file of trap records, but you need to be a project administrator in order to do this. Perhaps you could contact your project administrator and see if you could send them a CSV file each month and have them upload it for you?

Ngā mihi,
Sarah
(she/her)

Thanks for that. But I will need to prepare the .CSV file for the project administrator to upload. Where can I find details of the format required for the .CSV file?

Kia ora,

File format: UTF-8 (though if you need to use a different file format, let your Admin know and they can upload it as the file format you’re using)

Delimiter: ,

You can import trap records from a CSV file with the following columns:

  1. code (required) : The name or ID of the trap. If the trap code is not unique you will also need to include a line and/or an owner .
  2. date (required) : The date and time of the record. Dates must be in ISO 8601 format:
  • yyyy-mm-dd E.g: 2022-04-11
    or
  • yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm E.g: 2022-04-11 12:26
  1. line (optional) : The trap line the trap is associated with. You will need to include the line if you use the same trap code on different lines.
  2. name (optional) : The username of the person who created the trap. This is only necessary if you have multiple traps with the same code (but different creators). If the names don’t match the import will fail, so if in doubt, leave it out.
  3. recorded by (optional) : Person who recorded this record.
  4. species caught (required) : Ask project admin for allowed values.
  5. sex (optional) : Male / Female
  6. maturity (optional) : Juvenile / Adult
  7. status (required) : Ask project admin for allowed values.
  8. rebaited (required) : Ask project admin for allowed values.
  9. bait type (required) : Ask project admin for allowed values.
  10. bait details (optional) : Additional baits used, lures, etc.
  11. trap condition (required) : Ask project admin for allowed values.
  12. strikes (required) : You can use the strikes field to record the number of times a self resetting trap has been triggered since the last visit. For conventional traps the strike count would normally be 1 if the trap has sprung and caught something (0 if nothing as been caught), but you can also use this to record multiple kills.
  13. notes (optional) .

Note: The records import will not import records against retired traps. Only records for active traps will be imported.

Hope that helps!

Ngā mihi,
Sarah
(she/her)

Thanks. That’s great.

A very useful feature