Excel to WHP-Exchange Bottle file converter tool

Small tool to convert an spreadsheet Excel (.xlsx) or LibreOffice (.ods) file to WOCE WHP-Exchange format (BOTTLE)

This tool was developed for helping users to generate a properly formatted WHP-Exchange format file, automatically doing the following:

• Generating BOTTLE tag
• Including and commenting metadata
• Generating header and units line
• Fixing known paramenters to recommended precision decimals
• Setting END_BOTTLE tag

Can be used by calling python file or notebook locally or by launching the notebook through COLAB

Excel file needs to have the following format:

• FIRST (from the left) sheet has to contain the table of data WITH header names in 1st row, units in 2nd one and data below
• SECOND (from the left) sheet has to contain the metadata as text (if any) or be an empty sheet

if python file is called directly, please use the following format: excel2whpexchange.py [file_name] [institution]

• file_name will be the spreadsheet
• institution will be the identificator for creator institution or user as recommended by WHP-Exchange

example for me: $ python excel2whpexchange.py cruisefile.xlsx CSICIIMAVL