Open Refine: Exporting nested XML with templating - openrefine

Question

I have a question regarding the templating option for XML in Open Refine. Is it possible to export data from two columns in a nested XML-structure, if both columns contain multiple values, that need to be split first?
Here's an example to illustrate better what I mean. My columns look like this:
Column1
Column2
https://d-nb.info/gnd/119119110;https://d-nb.info/gnd/118529889
Grützner, Eduard von;Elisabeth II., Großbritannien, Königin
https://d-nb.info/gnd/1037554086;https://d-nb.info/gnd/1245873660
Müller, Jakob;Meier, Anina
Each value separated by semicolon in Column1 has a corresponding value in Column2 in the right order and my desired output would look like this:
<rootElement>
<recordRootElement>
...
<edm:Agent rdf:about="https://d-nb.info/gnd/119119110">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">Grützner, Eduard von</skos:prefLabel>
</edm:Agent>
<edm:Agent rdf:about="https://d-nb.info/gnd/118529889">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">Elisabeth II., Großbritannien, Königin</skos:prefLabel>
</edm:Agent>
...
</recordRootElement>
<recordRootElement>
...
<edm:Agent rdf:about="https://d-nb.info/gnd/1037554086">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">Müller, Jakob</skos:prefLabel>
</edm:Agent>
<edm:Agent rdf:about="https://d-nb.info/gnd/1245873660">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">Meier, Anina</skos:prefLabel>
</edm:Agent>
...
</recordRootElement>
<rootElement>
(note: in my initial posting, the position of the root element was not indicated and it looked like this:
<edm:Agent rdf:about="https://d-nb.info/gnd/119119110">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">Grützner, Eduard von</skos:prefLabel>
</edm:Agent>
<edm:Agent rdf:about="https://d-nb.info/gnd/118529889">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">Elisabeth II., Großbritannien, Königin</skos:prefLabel>
</edm:Agent>
)
I managed to split the values separated by ";" for both columns like this
{{forEach(cells["Column1"].value.split(";"),v,"<edm:Agent rdf:about=\""+v+"\">"+"\n"+"</edm:Agent>")}}
{{forEach(cells["Column2"].value.split(";"),v,"<skos:prefLabel xml:lang=\"zxx\">"+v+"</skos:prefLabel>")}}
but I can't find out how to nest the splitted skos:prefLabel into the edm:Agent element. Is that even possible? If not, I would work with seperate columns or another workaround, but I wanted to make sure, if there's a more direct way before.
Thank you!
Kristina

Answer 1

I am going to expand the answer from RolfBly using the Templating Exporter from OpenRefine.
I do have the following assumptions:
There is some other column left of Column1 acting as record identifying column (see first screenshot).
The columns actually have some proper names
The columns URI and Name are the only columns with multiple values. Otherwise we might produce empty XML elements with the following recipe.
We will use the information about records available via GREL to determine whether to write a <recordRootElement> or not.
Recipe:
Split first Name and then URI on the separator ";" via "Edit cells" => "Split multi-valued cells".
Go to "Export" => "Templating..."
In the prefix field use the value
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rootElement>
Please note that I skipped the namespace imports for edm, skos, rdf and xml.
In the row template field use the value:
{{if(row.index - row.record.fromRowIndex == 0, '<recordRootElement>', '')}}
<edm:Agent rdf:about="{{escape(cells['URI'].value, 'xml')}}">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">{{escape(cells['Name'].value, 'xml')}}</skos:prefLabel>
</edm:Agent>
{{if(row.index - row.record.fromRowIndex == row.record.rowCount - 1, '</recordRootElement>', '')}}
The row separator field should just contain a linebreak.
In the suffix field use the value:
</rootElement>

Answer 2

Disclaimer: If you're keen on using only OpenRefine, this won't be the answer you were hoping for. There may be ways in OR that I don't know of. That said, here's how I would do it.
Edit The trick is to keep URL and literal side by side on one line. b2m's answer below does just that: go from right to left splitting, not from left to right. You can then skip steps 2 and 3, to get the result in the image.
split each column into 2 columns by separator ;. You'll get 4 columns, 1 and 3 belong together, and 2 and 4 belong together. I'm assuming this will be the case consistently in your data.
export 1 and 3 to a file, and export 2 and 4 to another file, of any convenient format, using the custom tabular exporter.
concatenate those two files into one single file using an editor (I use Notepad++), or any other method you may prefer. Several ways to Rome here. Result in OR would be something like this.
You then have all sorts of options to put text strings in front, between and after your two columns.
In OR, you could use transform on column URL to build your XML using the below code
(note the \n for newline, that's probably just a line feed, you may want to use \r\n for carriage return + line feed if you're using Windows).
'<edm:Agent rdf:about="' + value + '">\n<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="zxx">' + cells.Name.value + '</skos:prefLabel>\n</edm:Agent>'
to get your XML in one column, like so
which you can then export using the custom tabular exporter again. Or instead you could use Add column based on this column in a similar manner, if you want to retain your URL column.
You could even do this in the editor without re-importing the file back into OR, but that's beyond the scope of this answer.