EDC Data Browser Help

The data browser allows you to navigate through our archives and view and download files to your computer.

Some of the files in our archive are publicly available. Others have restricted access. Files and directories to which you do not have access are marked with the key symbol. By default you will only have access to files and directories which are publicly available. To access other datasets (those marked with a key symbol) you will need to get an EDC username and password. To do this, please contact EDCManager@rl.ac.uk, giving details of which data you require and what you will use it for.

Once you have a username and password from us you can use the Login link on the data browser to login. You will then be able to access files from the particular restricted datasets to which you have been given access.

Viewing and downloading individual files

When you click on a filename the contents of the file will be displayed in your browser if it is in a format that can be displayed. You can then download the file by using the Save as... facility on your browser (usually found under the File drop-down menu). You should normally save the file as type Text (*.txt).

When you click on a filename where the contents are in binary format then your browser should automatically ask you if you want to download the file to your computer.

Downloading multiple files

If you wish to download multiple files there are two ways of doing this. The first is to use a command line tool called wget on your local computer.

For example, the following command will download all files below the /edc/Electricity/NTVV/EMMA directory:

wget -e robots=off --mirror --no-parent -r https://data.ukedc.rl.ac.uk/browse/edc/Electricity/NTVV/EMMA

Note that this will only work on publicly accessible directories.

The second method is to use the Download multiple files box at the top right of the screen. This allows you to select a set of files for downloading as a single gzipped tar file. To unpack these files you will need a utility such as WinZip on Windows or gzip and tar utilities on unix machines. Note that attempting to download many files at once is likely to result in long download times and possible failure. You are advised to split large downloads into more manageable chunks. An alternative way of downloading a large amount of data is to use FTP.

Downloading multiple files from a single directory

Use the data browser to navigate to the directory that you want to download files from then enter an appropriate file specification in the 'Download multiple files' box. You can use the following special characters in the file specification:

* Wildcard which matches zero or more characters.

Examples:
* matches all files in the directory.
wt* matches all files beginning with "wt".
*.dat matches all files ending with ".dat"
wt*.dat matches all files beginning with "wt" and ending with ".dat"

? Wildcard which matches exactly one character.

Examples:
as9?0102.dat matches "as990102.dat", "as980102.dat", "as970102.dat" etc.

Downloading multiple files from multiple directories

If you want to download files from more than one directory then you can use the 'depth' parameter. By default this is set to 1, which selects only files from the current directory. Specifying a depth of 2 will select files from the current directory and from any subdirectories below the current directory. Specifying a depth of 3 will select also select files in the subdirectories of subdirectories. Currently you can only specify a maximum depth of 3.

Downloading multiple files from selected directories

Using a file specification together with the 'depth' parameter should cover most requirements. However, if you need more control over what directories are selected then there is a more advanced way of doing this. If the file specification includes a / character then it is interpreted as specifying the filename and path of the files required. For example, the following file specification will select all files ending in '.txt' in the subdirectories with names beginning with 'eae-9':

*eae-9*/*.txt

Note that the 'depth' parameter is still used and you will therefore need to make sure that it is set to an appropriate value. (If you used the default value of 1 then no files would be selected by the above specification as they are all below the current directory).