Exporting Data

Export Formats

Sonar Catalog supports exporting data through the plugin hook system. Built-in formats:

Format	Description	Use Case
csv	Comma-separated values	Spreadsheets, data analysis
geojson	GeoJSON FeatureCollection	GIS tools (QGIS, ArcGIS)
json	JSON array	Scripting, custom processing

List Available Formats

sonar-catalog export --list-formats

Plugins can add additional export formats (e.g., Shapefile, KML).

Export Commands

Export all files to CSV

sonar-catalog export --format csv --output catalog.csv

Export with geographic data

sonar-catalog export --format geojson --geo --output survey_tracks.geojson

The --geo flag exports geographic point data (files with nav tracks) instead of the full file listing.

Export to stdout

sonar-catalog export --format json

Omit --output to write to stdout, useful for piping:

sonar-catalog export --format json | jq '.[] | select(.sonar_format == "xtf")'

Limit and filter

sonar-catalog export --format csv --limit 1000

GeoJSON Output

The GeoJSON export produces a FeatureCollection compatible with any GIS tool:

{
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "features": [
    {
      "type": "Feature",
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [3.456, 56.123]
      },
      "properties": {
        "content_hash": "abc123...",
        "file_name": "line_001.xtf",
        "file_size": 524288000,
        "sonar_format": "xtf",
        "nfs_server": "sonar-nas-01"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Adding Custom Export Formats

Plugins can register new export formats via the export_data and get_export_formats hooks. See Writing a Plugin.