Issue with photo importing during batch, alternative

I know that the Drupal 6 branch is closed, but I thought I would offer some code I wrote as an alternative to the way drealty imports photos.

I had major issues with file_copy not copying the placeholder over. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't. It seems like everything works great on the first import, but subsequent imports cannot recopy the placeholder even though it is told to with FILE_EXISTS_REPLACE. Since dr_images is cleared out during listing updates, assuming photos would be imported correctly, the node is saved. When file_copy fails, dr_images is not populated, thus listings show no images.

I literally spent 8 hours yesterday trying half a dozen ways to make the image placeholder copy method work. I tried using regular copy(), as well as debugging file_copy() with watchdog. It -seems- that the whole thing fails because $fclone does not clone correctly and/or realpath($source) (in file.inc) cannot find the file, so returns blank, which errors out. I could not figure out why and have never had an issue with the file system or FILE_EXISTS_REPLACE until now. All permissions etc are correct, all file owners are correct.

I figured that there really isn't a need to copy placeholders and deal with all that trouble. I came up with another method that seems to work great so far.

I implemented a nodeapi call when the node is viewed to fetch images, which is basically the same as the imagecache action. I have had a lot of success with this so far in the last hour of testing. I am offering up my code to help others who may be stuck in the same spot.

In drealty.module, add this nodeapi call:

function drealty_nodeapi(&$node, $op, $a3 = NULL, $a4 = NULL) {
  switch ($op) {
    case 'view':
      if ($node->type == 'drealty_property' && $node->dr_photocount[0]['value'] > 0 && !is_array($node->dr_images[0])) {
        $node->dr_images = array();
        
        include_once "phRets/phRets.php";
        $phRets = new phRets();
        
        if ($phRets && $node->drealty_property_conid[0]['value']) {
          if (drealty_rets_connect($phRets, $node->drealty_property_conid[0]['value'])) {
            watchdog('drealty_imagecache', 'Attempting to fetch photos for listing @id.', array('@id' => $node->dr_listingid[0]['value']), WATCHDOG_NOTICE);
            $result = $phRets->GetObject("Property", "Photo", $node->dr_listingid[0]['value'], '*', 1);
          }
          
          if (!$result[0]['Success']) {
            watchdog('drealty', 'An attempt to fetch photos failed for listing @id.', array('@id' => $node->dr_listingid[0]['value']), WATCHDOG_ERROR);
            return;
          }
          
          $upload_directory = file_directory_path() . '/drealty_img';
          
          if (!is_dir($upload_directory) && !mkdir($upload_directory, 0755)) {
            watchdog('drealty', 'Directory @dir doesn\'t exist and couldn\'t be created (probably a permissions problem).', array('@dir' => $upload_directory), WATCHDOG_ERROR);
            return;
          }
          
          foreach ($result as $photo) {
            $listing = $photo['Content-ID'];
            $number = $photo['Object-ID'];
            
            $filename = $listing . '-' . $number . '-' . $node->drealty_property_conid[0]['value'] . '.jpeg';
            $destination = $upload_directory . '/' . $filename;
            
            $file['uid'] = 1;
            $file['timestamp'] = time();
            $file['filename'] = $filename;
            $file['filemime'] = $photo['Content-Type'];
            $file['status'] = FILE_STATUS_PERMANENT;
            
            $result = file_save_data($photo['Data'], $destination, FILE_EXISTS_REPLACE);
            
            if ($result) {
              $file['filesize'] = filesize($destination);
              $file['filepath'] = $destination;
              
              //write record in files table
              drupal_write_record('files', $file);
              $new_file = field_file_load(db_last_insert_id('files', 'fid'));
              
              if ($new_file) {
                $node->dr_images[] = $new_file;
              }
            } else {
              watchdog('drealty', 'Could not save photo @photo for listing @id', array('@photo' => $filename, '@id' => $listing), WATCHDOG_ERROR);
            }
          }
  
          node_save($node);
          cache_clear_all();
          drealty_disconnect($phRets);
          
          // reload the page so the images are viewable immediately instead of on the second view
          watchdog('drealty', 'Reloading node for listing @id to display images.', array('@id' => $listing), WATCHDOG_NOTICE);
          drupal_goto(request_uri(), array('stop_redirect' => true));
        }
      }
      break;
  }
}

Change the drealty.batch.inc file to the following. My logic here is that when a listing is being updated, wipe out its dr_images record, and delete and images associated with the listing, since we will get them the next time the node is viewed:

around line 394:

elseif ($_fields[$field]['correlation'] === 'pic_count' && $_file/*  && $_placeholder */) {
          unset($node->dr_images);
          
          // clear out existing images, we pick them up the next time the node is viewed
          for ($index = 1; $index <= $value; $index++) {
            $filename = "{$prop[$id]}-{$index}-{$conid}.jpeg";
            $path_to_file = file_directory_path() . '/drealty_img/' . $filename;
            
            if (file_exists($path_to_file)) {
              watchdog('drealty', 'Deleting file @file', array('@file' => $path_to_file), WATCHDOG_NOTICE);
              $success = file_delete($path_to_file);
             	if ($success) {
                db_query('DELETE FROM {files} WHERE filepath = "%s"', $path_to_file);
              }
            } else {
              watchdog('drealty', 'No file found for: @file, nothing to delete.', array('@file' => $path_to_file), WATCHDOG_NOTICE);
            } 
          }
        }

I am sure this code is by no means perfect but its getting me out of my jam and hope it helps others. If anyone has suggestions to improve this please share. I have not noticed any issues so far (load times, etc).