Ability to store additional information in custom (CCK) fields

What you want is the capacity to record additional data about imported items in CCK fields? That's a good idea, Jorge.

(If I'm wrong, please correct the issue title to be more descriptive.)

It can be a good idea to store image link attach to an item, like a Greader item. How can we get the link and store it in a cck field?

Here's an example of what I believe to be the goal of this thread, or at least similar to it:

1. Enable the Aggregator module found here /admin/build/modules under 'Core - optional'.

2. Create a feed at /admin/content/aggregator/add/feed using the feed below:
http://feeds.pandora.com/feeds/people/john/recentactivity.xml

2. View the results at /aggregator

You should see the feed, with each item showing all the elements exactly as the original raw feed presents them, such as images, icons, links, etc.

I understand that Aggregator does not then go and create a node for each feed item, which I actually prefer, and so these extra elements in each feed item are not cck fields.

I am just wanting the imported feed at /user/1/activitystream, or the activitystream block, to look like the one at /aggregator

Is this example, at least visually, similar to the goal of this thread?

For a client I needed to store the link and image of a Facebook status with the activity stream node. I wanted to store this in CCK because storing the data in the body field of the node was not flexible enough. To make this possible I created a patch for the activity stream module. It basically merges the data returned by hook_streamapi with the node object. This way any extra module can return the CCK fields.

I hopes this helpes someone. I did some tests and it didn't break any default functionality, so I think this could be commited to the module.

Let me know if it helps!

Here's an example of how I added the CCK data:

function activitystream_facebook_streamapi($user) {

  // This user doesn't have a Facebook ID entered
  if (!$user->userid) {
    return;
  }

  // Use the Facebook GraphAPI to pull in the user's status updates
  $updates = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://graph.facebook.com/'.$user->userid.'/feed'));
  $items = array();
  if (is_array($updates->data)) {
    foreach ($updates->data as $item) {
      $ids = explode('_',$item->id);
      $activity['link'] = html_entity_decode('http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid='.$ids[1].'&id='.$ids[0]);
      $activity['title'] = html_entity_decode($item->message);
      $activity['body'] = $item->message;
      $activity['timestamp'] = strtotime($item->created_time);
      $activity['guid'] = md5('http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid='.$ids[1].'&id='.$ids[0]);
      $activity['id'] = md5($ids[1]);
      // Check for extra CCK fields
      if (module_exists('content')) {
        
        // Get content type CCK field
        $type = content_types('activitystream');
        $fields = $type['fields'];
        
        // Add link
        if(!empty($item->link) && isset($fields['field_link']) && $fields['field_link']['type'] == 'link'){
          $activity['field_link'] = array();
          $activity['field_link'][0]['url'] = $item->link;
          if(!empty($item->name)) $activity['field_link'][0]['title'] = $item->name;
        }
                
      }
      $items[] = $activity;
    }
  }
   
  return $items;
}

This is possible in 7.x-3.x - the Activity Stream item nodes are fully fielded, and a module could add new fields to the content type, then listen on hook_node_presave() to apply the extra data to those fields. Themes receive the whole $node object and would be able to use that data in the stream if they'd like.