[development] The state of import export

[Shai Gluskin]

Phillipe and all,

I don't have the development skills to help on this one... but I promise to
be a tester as things get rolling. I totally support the urgency/importance
of this work.

+1

I was talking with Angie Byron about this at the Portland Lullabot workshop.
She noted that data migration modules have a hard time staying current
because developers get interested in them when they (desperately) need the
functionality and then lose interest when they are finished with a large
migration of data.

As Drupal grows, it seems likely there would be enough work for a consulting
firm to specialize in data migration to Drupal. Other Drupal shops would
likely be thrilled to sub out that piece of the work. So I do think there is
hope for the future. Thanks for taking leadership on this.

Shai

On 1/25/08, Philippe Jadin <philippe.jadin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> In trying to fix http://drupal.org/node/191197#comment-705056 (allow
> to import nodes in batch), I feel a bit sorry for the status of the
> various import export solutions in Drupal.
>
> - importexportapi is somewhat dead
> - node import only accepts to import everything at once, and does not
> provide duplicate checking
> - feed parser api and feed mapper seems to be a brighter future, but
> do not allow everything node import / importexportapi does
>
>
> So I'm wondering where to put my efforts. I'm trying to import 20.000
> contacts as cck nodes, and allow user to reimport the same contacts
> and update the existing nodes, all with a nice import/export
> interface.
>
> I think the first step would be to have standardized import / export
> format for a Drupal node, maybe xml based (I think there is a xml
> format for books only), with support for cck, taxonomy, and all.
>
> This is a very complex problem, but I think it's important for Drupal,
> as an open platform, to provide excellent import/export tools.
>
> Which module has the greatest chance to provide a solid base? Is there
> a standard node xml (or some other format) representation? I'd like to
> spend time on a somewhat future proof solution.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated
>
> Philippe
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/attachments/20080125/9fe43d26/attachment-0001.htm