sdif

Parser/writer for US Swimming SDIF files.

The format is described in sdifv3.txt, obtained from https://www.usms.org/admin/sdifv3f.txt, dated April 28 1998, accessed Feb 12 2023.

United States Swimming has matured as an organization and expanded services to individuals and clubs. To support this expansion, USS has developed a computer plan. One component is a standard interchange format for technical data. Swimming data must be transmitted among the clubs, Local Swimming Committees (LSCs), and the USS headquarters office. Exchanging meet results is one example, where data from a host club is distributed to swimmers and clubs using diskettes or modems. Some LSCs are compiling swimmer statistics and would retype the data from printed sheets if electronic transmission were not available. A standard format promotes easy exchange of data and the development of new computer programs and services. The goal is to preserve the valuable efforts of our volunteers.

But why?

Swim meet administration uses some incredibly venerable software! Whatever innovations have visited swimming in the last twenty-five years have not made much of a mark on the conduct of meets, and a handful of vendors continue to do the bare minimum to keep their legacy code, and their legacy data formats, chugging along on new hardware and modern operating systems.

Most of these legacy data formats have no public documentation, so, if you'd like to get a bunch of entries into some meet management software, there aren't many obvious starting points! They don't accept anything as quotidian as a spreadsheet.

SDIF (SD3) is the proud exception, so here's a library. SD3 is a single-file data format with multiple record types and optional internal consistency checks. Each line in the file represents a record, and the fields are specified as fixed-width regions. It seems intended to represent a sort of flat-file database as much as an interchange format.

You can use this package to make sense of these files, or construct the records that you need to get data into a meet management tool.

How do I start?

To read a sd3 file:

with open("my_file.sd3", "rt") as f:
    for record in sdif.records.decode_records(f):
        print(record)

To write a sd3 file:

a0 = sdif.models.FileDescription(
    organization=sdif.models.OrganizationCode.masters,
    sdif_version="V3",
    file_code=sdif.models.FileCode.vendor_defined,
    software_name="My Cool Software",
    software_version="v0.0.0",
    contact_name="Joe Bloggs",
    contact_phone="+15555551212",
    file_creation=date.today(),
    submitted_by_lsc=None,
)
with open("my_file.sd3", "w") as f:
    f.write(sdif.records.encode_records([a0]))

Valid sd3 files must contain at least a FileDescription and a FileTerminator. See the SDIF specification for more details.

For the specific case of feeding meet entry data to Meet Manager, one hint is

I have found that the only essential records are:

• one A0 (FileDescription) and
• one B1 (Meet) at the start of the file,
• one C1 (TeamId) line per club,
• one D0 line (IndividualEvent) per swimmer per event followed by one D1 line (IndividualInfo) per swimmer,
• and a Z0 (FileTerminator) at the end of the file.

Other resources

• https://groups.google.com/g/sdif-forum

License

Copyright 2023 Tim D. Smith

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this package except in compliance with the License. There is a copy of the license in the file LICENSE.

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.