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ArcheCSV: Bulk content importing for Plone
The new ArcheCSV product allows you to import content from a CSV text file. Looks incredibly useful for folks migrating content into Plone.
I'm very excited by ArcheCSV. It's a simple, powerful, easy-to-use tool for doing bulk uploads of content into Plone from a CSV (comma-separated-value) text file. I think this is going to be insanely useful for anyone who is trying to import a big pile of old content into a new Plone site.
Importing a CSV file full of content into your site is a quick and painless process, performed entirely through the Plone (no ZMI needed).- Install the ArcheCSV file, which requires Plone 2.1.2 or 2.1.3. (It hasn't yet been tested with the forthcoming Plone 2.5, but I'd guess it's likely to work there too, or require only minor modifications.)
- Use the Add menu to add an "Importer" object inside the folder into which you want to import your content.
- Walk through the simple wizard to:
- Choose a content type for your imported content. (The dropdown could stand a little clean up to remove the Zope jargon. For example, if you want to create ordinary Pages, you have to choose "ATContentTypes.ATDocument.Document" which could be a bit intimidating for new site admins.)
- Upload your CSV file or paste it into the provided text box.
- Map the fields in your CSV file to the fields of the Plone content type. The UI for doing this is very clean and straightforward.
- Run the bulk import. Voila!
ArcheCSV also has a handy feature that allows you to optionally "update" objects that already exist. I think it matches on the objects' IDs. This could be very useful for syncing data in Plone with data exported from another system.
All in all, this looks like a smooth, simple, useful tool. I could imagine it being really useful in a TON of situations, including, but certainly not limited to:
- Importing blog entries into Plone
- Importing content from RDBMS-based CMS systems into Plone
One suggestion: "ArcheCSV" is a pretty geeky name that doesn't clearly describe what this useful product does. Why not call it something more immediately descriptive like "CSV Content Importer" or "Plone Content Importer"? I think that could make it easier for beginning and intermediate Plone site administrators to find and use it.
Big thanks to the folks at 1000asa.com and to Richard Amerman of 7TechNW for getting this out into the world.
A good question
import businesses
Check out this little drupal module I also ran across recently -
http://drupal.org/node/46008
It tries its best to slurp in a static html site, and cms-ify it. Slightly different use case, but maybe not miles off base from what this can do, if you assume some uniformity or minimal structure to the static html site.
ATCSVImport
How does it compare/complement with Enfold's ATCSVImport ?
Cheers