Soumitra Dutta Oxford-how do i write a job in openfn to transform or map data?

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Hi, My name is Soumitra Dutta, an Oxford-based entrepreneur & photographer. I’m trying to write a job in openfn to transform map data but i’m not totally sure i’m approaching it the right way. has anyone done something similar or have examples they can share? i’d really appreciate any suggestions or best practices!

Regards

Soumitra Dutta

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Hey Soumitra :waving_hand: , welcome to the OpenFn community :people_hugging: !

Data transformation and mapping is honestly one of the things people use OpenFn for the most, so you are in good company here.

The core idea is straightforward. In an OpenFn job, everything flows through a state object. Your incoming data lives in state.data, and you transform it by reshaping that object into whatever format your target system expects. A simple mapping job looks like this:

fn(state => {
  const input = state.data;

  const transformed = {
    id: input.patient_id,
    fullName: `${input.first_name} ${input.last_name}`,
    dob: input.date_of_birth,
  };

  return { ...state, data: transformed };
});

One thing I would really encourage you to try is the AI Assistant inside app.openfn.org. When you open a job in the editor, you can describe what you want to do in plain English and the assistant will figure out the right adaptors to use and generate the job code for you. The key is to be as descriptive as possible. Something like “I am receiving patient registration data from an ODK form and I want to map it to a DHIS2 tracked entity” will give you a much better result than just “help me transform data”. You can then iterate from there. This video (is a bit long) but can help you learn more about the AI Assistant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L_cGl9tWRc

If you are mapping data to a specific system like DHIS2, Salesforce, or OpenMRS, there are also purpose-built adaptors with helper functions that make the job much easier. The adaptors docs are a good place to explore what is available.

Also, every Wednesday from 10:00 to 10:30 UTC, @PiusK runs a community drop-in session where you can ask questions live and get hands-on help. Feel free to join at https://meet.google.com/xun-dtvz-cpj.

A couple of questions to help us point you in the right direction: when you say “map data”, do you mean field mapping (taking fields from one format and transforming them into another), or are you actually working with geographic or geospatial data like GeoJSON or coordinates? Both are very doable in OpenFn but the approach is different. Also, what is your source data format and which target system are you trying to send it to?

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