README

Import the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference into a Sqlite3 database. Tested on ruby 1.9.2.

Instructions

1. Download and the ASCII version of the SR26 database from the Nutrient Data Laboratory Home Page. There is a 7.6 Mb ZIP file containing the entire database.

2. Extract the database into this project's top-level directory. It will create a subdirectory called 'sr26' and should look like:

    sr26/Data_src.pdf
    sr26/DATA_SRC.txt
    sr26/DATSRCLN.txt
    sr26/DERIV_CD.txt
    sr26/FD_GROUP.txt
    sr26/FOOD_DES.txt
    sr26/FOOTNOTE.txt
    sr26/LANGDESC.txt
    sr26/LANGUAL.txt
    sr26/NUT_DATA.txt
    sr26/NUTR_DEF.txt
    sr26/sr26_doc.pdf
    sr26/SRC_CD.txt
    sr26/WEIGHT.txt
   

3. Requires bundler. Run bundle install to install required gems if needed.

4. Run rake load to create database and, optionally, rake pivot to create a flattened table with nutrient values (pivot task requires fts4 extensions to Sqlite).