menu support for node_import

Some comments:

• I don't see any reason not to map "menu:weight". Although your "weight == order of import" is fine I suppose.

•     // Not exactly sure what this does :-{
      node_import_set_object('menu:parent', $values['menu:parent'], $values['menu:path']);
  

  The node_import_set_object()/node_import_get_object() is a form of cache. It avoids looking up the same values (eg node title → node id). Whenever you have some db_query() it probably is useful to have a node_import_set_object(). What is stored in the cache is up to you, for example:

  node_import_set_object('user', 'some name', $uid);
  node_import_set_object('node', 'some title', $nid);
  

  It is also used to store (and retrieve) inverse lookups. Eg when a node is created it can do:

  node_import_set_object('node:title', $nid, 'some title');
  

  although I'm only using this in supported/book.inc right now which contains a lot of code to handle the case where you import a whole book. To avoid having errors that the parent book page (identified by title) does not exist, I have some $virtual_book_page counter. The reverse lookup is then used to inform the user that the book page will be created during import. supported/taxonomy.inc needs some rewriting to use the same logic. A lot of code which is just used in preview anyway :/

  So you probably want:

      if (($parent = node_import_get_object('menu:path', $values['menu:path'])) || ($parent = menu_node_import_get_parent_from_path($values['menu:path']) ))  {
        $values['menu:parent'] = $parent;
      }
      else {
        // otherwise drop it into the configured menu root.
        drupal_set_message("Failed to find an existing menu parent of ". $values['menu:path'] . " - just dropping it in the root of the menu.");
  //this doesn't do anything:      $values['menu:parent'] = $values['menu:parent'];
      }
  
      // Caching the parent will avoid looking it up the next time.
      node_import_set_object('menu:path', $values['menu:path'], $values['menu:parent']);
  

Looking forward to seeing this completed.

BTW: I think it is useful to look at supported/book.inc because the hierarchy of books is stored in the menu tables as well. So probably some parts can be reused.

And you will probably also need hook_node_import_postprocess() as well (same as in 5.x).

Well, I had the same problems in supported/book.inc :-)

You'll need to use the cache_set(), cache_get() for the weights as node_import_set/get() is on a request basis as well (just like static), so that will not work.

Book also complains about non-existing parents, so what I did was setting it in hook_node_import_postprocess().

There is also the "hidden feature" to set the global $node_import_can_continue to FALSE.

I'll have to look at it more closely this weekend as well.

Hi,

I am exactly looking for something like this, to import nodes into menues.
Is this script working? If yes, how can it be used?

Best Regards
Sandro

You should copy the attachment in sites/all/modules/node_import/supported/menu.inc (or whereever you installed node_import module). Please test it and report back. I'll have time to look at it more closely next week.

Hi Jaques,

Thanks for the hint, i can see now the mapping fields on the "Map file columns" Page.

Some things are not quiet clear now:

- What kind of data does the field "Parent path" expect?
- In the DB (table menu_links) i can see only a Value "plid" wich means to me "parent - link - id" wich is a reference to "mlid" in the same table.
- When i import a whole structure, this id is not known to me when i create the import document.

Would be great to have this cleared.

Thank you very much in advance.

Best Regards
Sandro

One more thing, when i go further, after step 6 (Set default values) i get this error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function dpm() in /www/htdocs/mysite/sites/all/modules/node_import/supported/menu.inc on line 119

I forgot to mention, that i am using the dev release of node_import (6.x-1.x-dev (2009-Apr-22))
This because i have to import content in multiple languages and this is working only at the dev release.

Best Regards
Sandro

Thank you for the explanation, i know now what to do... :-)

Suggestions for improvement welcome

To solve the issue with the not known plids at the time of import, i can imagine to use something similar to the translation import id wich is a random number i write into the csv to make shure all translations are "attached" to the same node.

Example for translation:
Translation-ID, Title, Body, Node-Language
1, Homepage, Homepagebody in german, de
1, Page d'accuiel, Homepagebody in french, fr

We could use that ID/translation-number for the menu-import too:
To reflect a structure like:
Homepage
- About us
-- Contact
I would write a csv like:

Translation-ID, Title, Body, Node-Language, Menu-Parent (0=root), Menu-Name (as in the DB)
1, Homepage, Homepagebodycontent, de, 0, my-content-navigation
2, About us, About us content, de, 1 , my-content-navigation
3, Contact, Contact content, de, 2, my-content-navigation
and so on...

It would be required then to order the items inside import csv in a way, that the root documents are at the top and so on.

So, the parent path is a hierarchical path string.

I assume the values of this path are the same as in the db field link_title (inside menu_links), right?

Translation-ID would be some kind of virtual NID to reference later to. I understand how this would work. Indeed for translations, this would be a logical way to go - never tackled that problem.

I prefer however to use something like the path. Compare it to how referencing users works: you rather use the email or name, rather then the UID. Don't know how if this could cleanly handle the translation as well.

If the first row creates a path like "/", row 2 could reference it as "/" (in your example), a sub-page of "About us" would reference the page as "/about-us". I think that is more clear. Menu and book should work the same, referencing by path (now node references are only referenced by title which doesn't always work). CCK Node references could profit from that as well. Instead of paths, there could be other ways to reference something else. Maybe a "virtual some id" would fit it.

dman worked on menu.inc, but indeed it was work-in-progress and only worked for his test/dev-site. I should clean it up... I should clean many things...

now node references are only referenced by title

Ok, so if i understand that right, its the title field of the referenced node. This can contain special Characters and whitspaces...

Thank you, will try that.

Started banging around a bit on this feature. We shifted things slightly to allow people to use the url alias for the node, which should be used as the parent menu item. Separated menu support from what looked like some logic based on the URL path for the inserted node itself.

Same deal...need to insert nodes level-by-level.

Is this patch usuable?

I see I've disable the menu support... Would like to get it back in. I'll test...

Committed to 6.x-1.x-dev. Will be included in next release.