Is there a way to have cytoscape automatically recognize list columns when importing tsv data

I want to import a tsv table containing node data for an already existing network via the File/Import/Table From File option. The tsv table has the following format

id    accessions
1     ABCDE.1|CDEFG.1
2     EFGH.1

I can manually select that I want the accessions column to be read as a list of strings, with the | symbol as a separator. But I want to know if there is a way to have Cytoscape automatically recognize this format.

I saw in the documentation for the detailed file format that there you can specify the column type in the header, by writing the column name as col_name (class=String). Is there a way to specify the data type in the header row for the .tsv format as well? If so, how would it work for list types?

I also read in this question that the command line tool could be used for importing data, using the command "network import file". I tried using the command as follows

network import file file="example.tsv" columnTypeList="s,sa" dataTypeList="s,sl" delimitersForDataList="|" rootNetworkList="existing_network" indexColumnSourceInteraction=0 targetColumnList="nodeId" startLoadRow=2

This command does almost the right thing and it recognized the list columns correctly, but it creates a new network instead of assigning the attributes to the existing network. I tried specifying the existing network with rootNetworkList="existing_network" but that didn't change anything. I don't know if it's relevant, but at the moment the attribute table only includes a subset of the nodes in the existing network.

Any help to get this to work (with only the tsv file or with the command) would be appreciated.

Well, after perusing the code in some detail, I find the following comment:

// TODO: Try to detect List types

So, currently, we don't try to guess list types in the input dialog. On the other hand, the command line approach should work. The issue, is you are using the wrong command. Instead of using network import file, you should use table import file, which has the same kind of arguments as network import except that it imports into a network rather than attempting to import a network.

Hope this helps!

-- scooter