Overview
The Cleansing node is a data preparation node in a Weave Workflow that applies one or more cleansing operations to selected columns of the upstream data. It sits in the middle of a Workflow’s processing path — between source nodes (Data Import) and terminal nodes (Result, Output) — and emits transformed data downstream. The node’s operations include whitespace removal (Whole, Left, Right, Selective), character-class removal (Letter, Number, Special Character), null handling (Remove Null Columns, Drop Null Values), duplicate handling (Drop Duplicate Values), and additional column transforms.
Cleansing nodes are added from the Data Preparation category of the node panel. Configuration is two steps: select columns via the Select button (opens a column-selection popup), then pick operations via checkboxes in the right panel. Operations are stackable — multiple checkboxes can be active simultaneously, and all enabled operations apply in combination to all selected columns.
Note: “Workflow” is the in-UI term for what some Weave documentation calls a pipeline. This reference uses “Workflow.”
When to use it
- Cleaning user-entered text data — trimming whitespace, removing stray special characters, normalizing case.
- Deduplicating rows where the same logical record appears multiple times due to source-system quirks.
- Dropping incomplete records where critical columns are null and the row isn’t useful for downstream analysis.
- Extracting clean alphanumeric content from text fields by removing letters, numbers, or symbols selectively.
- Removing entirely empty columns from the data before passing it downstream.
Configuration
Column selection
| 1. Open the Select dialog | Click the Select button in the Cleansing node’s configuration. A Cleansing popup appears with the upstream columns listed. |
| 2. Choose columns | Check the columns the cleansing operations should apply to. Columns not selected are passed through unchanged. |
| 3. Apply | Click Apply to commit the column selection. The selected columns are now scoped to the operations chosen in the right panel. |
Operation selection
Operations are enabled via checkboxes in the right panel. Multiple operations apply in combination — checking Remove Special Character AND Remove Number applies both to the selected columns. The full set of documented operations:
| Remove Whitespaces | Strips all whitespace characters from the selected columns’ values. |
| Remove Special Character | Removes non-alphanumeric characters from values. |
| Remove Letter | Removes alphabetic characters from values. |
| Remove Number | Removes numeric digits from values. |
| Remove Null Columns | Drops entirely null columns from the output. |
| Remove Selective Whitespaces | Removes whitespace from specific positions or based on specific rules. |
| Remove Left Whitespaces | Removes whitespace from the left edge of values (leading trim). |
| Remove Right Whitespaces | Removes whitespace from the right edge of values (trailing trim). |
| Drop Null Values | Removes rows where any selected column is null. Reduces row count. |
| Drop Duplicate Values | Removes duplicate values. |
| Uppercase | Text converted from lowercase to uppercase. |
| Lowercase | Text converted from uppercase to lowercase. |
| Remove Null Rows | Null rows are removed. |
| Drop Duplicate Rows | Removes duplicate rows. |
Key behaviors
Cleansing is a transformation node. Unlike Data Import (source) and Result / Output (terminal), Cleansing sits in the middle of the Workflow. It receives data upstream, transforms it, and passes the result downstream. Multiple Cleansing nodes can be chained for per-column operation control.
Two-step configuration: columns, then operations. The Select button popup chooses which columns the operations apply to. The right-panel checkboxes choose which operations apply. Both steps are required — selecting operations without selecting columns produces no transformation; selecting columns without enabling operations passes data through unchanged.
Operations stack. Multiple operations can be enabled simultaneously and all apply to the selected columns. Remove Whitespaces + Remove Special Character + Remove Number combine into a composite cleansing that strips all three categories of characters from the selected columns.
Selected columns get all enabled operations. A single Cleansing node applies the same set of enabled operations to all selected columns — it’s not possible to apply Remove Number to one column and Remove Whitespaces to another within a single node. For per-column operation control, chain multiple Cleansing nodes, each configured for a specific column subset.