Greetings, Is there a way to add or update an observation field for many observations en masse? Ideally, for my purposes, something along the lines of having an external table with observation IDs & observation field values (e.g., three columns, ‘observation ID’, ‘observation field name’, ‘observat…

During upload – at least on the website (not sure about mobile apps) – you can add observation fields. If you look at the left side of the screen, you’ll notice there are Details, Tags, Projects, and Fields. You can select fields, and add a field that you want to use, and then you can assign a value…

Thanks, Charlie and Pisum. I haven’t really used the batch edit feature much. Checking it out again now, it seems to make life more efficient, by taking it from a “per observation” task to a “per taxon” task. At present it says I’ve got 4512 observations and 1285 taxa, so doing anything on a per tax…

[image] aspidoscelis: Checking it out again now, it seems to make life more efficient, by taking it from a “per observation” task to a “per taxon” task. In the batch edit, I don’t think you have to apply the same values to the batch. So you could pull in a bunch of different observations – ev…

There is always the option to go via the iNaturalist API if you want to do anything in batch.

@jtklein - Well, that might very well be what I’m looking for, but I have absolutely no idea where to start. Do you have any advice for someone who vaguely knows what an API is but has no background in using them? From past experience, I’m guessing this is the kind of thing I could figure out just f…

For instance, I’ve gotten good at using excel formulae because–hey, I can install excel and type stuff in, and then type other things in, and sooner or later I figure out how to do the thing I want. I haven’t the faintest idea how to do anything in mysql, on the other hand, because it would apparent…

The documentation website of the API has some Sandbox for all the possible queries. E.g. for updating an already existing observation: https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/docs/#!/Observations/put_observations_id The iNaturalist API works simply over the web (HTTP) so you do not need any installs or dep…

Hm. So far, I’ve figured out how to get a message saying: “You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.” The relevant section here is opaque to me: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/api+reference#auth It seems to be describing how to code the proper authentication procedure into an applicatio…

Oh, interesting, apparently I can just go to https://www.inaturalist.org/users/api_token and copy / paste the string. I tried that this morning and it didn’t work, but now it does… must be something funny in my home browser settings, I guess. In any case, it looks like this probably does what I want…

Batch editing / mass updates on observation fields?

General

charlie March 21, 2019, 11:34am 2

if you create fields you can use the bulk edit fields to populate the values your observations, though barring some admin tool it can only be done 200 at a time. You could also use tags, less formal, but somewhat easier for some things.

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Batch editing / mass updates on observation fields?

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