Is it possible to make the update of Feed Item Nodes more sensitive? My feed creates nodes of a type that has been extended with some CCK fields. I'd like to have my feed items update relevant fields if the feed itself changes, but without removing any of the non-feed-supplied data that is added after the initial feed item node's creation.

Some context: I'm trying to build a workflow system to help administrators respond to travel alerts and warnings that are posted by the US State Department. Our institution reviews these alerts as they are posted and then adds its own explanations and categories to them. I have created a 'travel warning' node type that adds the fields that we need for our operations (whether the alert is general in nature, internal categorization, valid dates, a textual explanation, etc). Right now, the feed properly creates item nodes as expected and I can then go in and change the CCK-based elements to extend the feed item. However, if an item changes in the feed, only item information provided by the feed update is retained and the CCK-based elements are lost.

I'm guessing that Feeds is just checking to see if the mapped elements have changed and, if they have, modifying just those elements in the appropriate feed item nodes. It would be great, however, if another check could be introduced into the process to see if there is unmapped data in the existing feed item node that should be preserved during the update.

This is pretty important for my needs and I imagine that others would benefit from such functionality as well. I'm willing to work on the code, but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly where the check for updated material takes place. If someone can point me in the right direction, I'll be happy to have a go at it.

Comments

alex_b’s picture

alex_b commented
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

This is a Duplicate. #688696: NodeProcessor: Ignore changes to certain fields upon node update

Would love if you could outline briefly on #688696 your use case where you have fields that *never* get populated from the feed - this is slightly different from the use cases already discribed on #688696.

mweixel’s picture

mweixel commented

Hi, Alex:

Thanks for the quick follow-up.

In my case, I need to have fields in the feed item to include material that augment the node to include information for our institution. Anything contributed by the feed is accepted when the feed item is created and then a group adds the institutional components (internal categories, a textual response, an expiration date, etc). These are never contributed by the feed and are manually added as part of a work flow. At this point, however, if the feed is updated, these other data are lost.

Does that make sense?