Load Data

You can ask Alfa to load a data file by using the load command. Alfa has a flexible syntax. For example, all the commands below produce the same result:

load tumor
load tumoor data
open tumor data
Please load tumor csv file

Once the data is loaded, the table box shows the columns in the csv file along with the type of column and the range of data present in the column.

Load command supports more files than just csv files. You can load an image file using the same procedure
load phone image
will load an image from database and display it in the visualization window.

How does Alfa know where to load the file from?

There are three ways to add a custom data file so that Alfa can find it.

Adding the data file to the path
The first method is to edit Alfarvis/resources/file/database.csv to add the path to the file and specify the keywords associated with the file. This process is tedious but allows the user to add custom keywords describing the file.
Adding folders to the path
The other approach is for Alfa to figure out the file given the folder it lives in. You can add a few common data folders to the file database, and Alfa will figure out the file keywords based on its name and type. Alfa creates a database every time it loads up so any changes to folders will be visible after boot up.

For example, if you have an abc_data.csv in the downloads folder, you can load the csv file using any of the following instructions

load abc data from downloads
load abc data

The second command can lead to ambiguity if there are multiple abc data files in other folders specified by the user.

loading files directly
If the file or the folder containing the file is not present in the Alfa path, just type load or import in the Alfa command window and Alfa will open up a dialog which will allow you to navigate to the folder where the file is present and load it. Use either of the following commands.
```
load
import
```