In this issue, I'm assuming that the Asset is no longer being developed for D6 and D7. If this is not correct, please clarify.

We have a website running D5 which has made extensive use of the asset module. We are planning to upgrade the website to D6. One of the biggest hurdles in making this upgrade is going to be replacing the functionality currently provided by the Asset module.

Asset Filter

One of the biggest issues is a large amount of the content on the site contains asset tokens which will no longer be rendered without the Asset module.
How do we replace these tokens with something that will render the content properly?
Should we leave the tokens in place and somehow install the Asset Filter into the upgraded site?
Should we render the HTML? I'm not sure that this will even work because then the input filters for the content would need to allow embed and other tags that are generally forbidden for security purposes.

Currently, we are using the Asset module for Inline Images, Inline Embedded Video, Audio Files. Each of these may need special treatment.

Inline Images

The images are still there, as are the imagecache versions which were inserted inline using the Asset module. Can these be converted to use the Inline module? If so, how? Are there any other proposed methods of conversion?

Inline Embedded Video

Asset module did a beautiful job of providing a way to embed videos into content and even allow content to flow around the videos.
To my knowledge there is no other module that allows this kind of functionality, though it would be great if EmField would implement it. What needs to be done to make the conversion?

Audio Files

Audio seems to be the simplest of these problems, largely because the audio is just a field instead of being inline with the content. We are going to migrate to FileField while still on D5. This way, we can allow drupal to handle the upgrade to D6.

  1. Install FileField
  2. Migrate db data for mp3 files from the Asset table into the FileField table, keeping the node associations intact. Is there a script already created to handle this conversion?
  3. Update the views to use the new FileField instead of the Asset field.

Thank you for any advice you can provide.

Comments

OpenChimp’s picture

OpenChimp commented

On a side note which may be of interest to people reading this, it seems that D7 will have a nice replacement for inline YouTube videos using Media: YouTube which will have WYSIWYG integration.

ekatz2’s picture

ekatz2 commented

I have written a PHP script that will convert the asset tags to standard HTML for documents and images. If you need to convert other asset types you'll need to modify the script a bit. Please visit http://ers.asu.edu/blog/2010/04/07/removing-asset-module-from-drupal-5/

Let me know if you have any problems.

OpenChimp’s picture

OpenChimp commented

ekatz - thanks a ton for sharing this migration script. I know it will come in handy. We are actually going to wait for D7 before making the upgrade of the site, so I will not be making use of it for a little while.

wmostrey’s picture

wmostrey commented
Title: Upgrade to D6 - Migrate away from Asset module - possibly use Filefield, Inline, ImageField » Asset module for Drupal 6
Version: 5.x-2.x-dev » 5.x-1.0
Status: Active » Fixed

Michael, you are correct that asset will not be upgraded to Drupal 6, mainly because there exist many valid alternatives that make the asset module obsolete:

  • Asset is the standard for Drupal 5
  • FileField + FileField Sources + IMCE is the standard for Drupal 6
  • Media is the standard for Drupal 7

Erik, thank you so much for your migration guide! I took the liberty to include a link to your guide in the asset module documentation: Asset module for Drupal 6 and above: migration guide.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.