Plugin: CSVGrab

Dan, your answer about using CSVGrab to update existing entries, above:

>> CSVGrab will write over an existing entry if the “unique” field you specify matches the same field in the existing entry. In your case, this is “official-name”. So you can reimport multiple times. <<

I don’t think this is correct. The documentation states the opposite, actually:

“The unique field determines which fields are checked to see if the current feed element has already been imported e.g.: unique=”title,date” will not import any items with the same title and date as an existing element in the selected weblog. Note, the field names are the fields set up within your own weblog (ie, title, date, and any custom fields) not the names of the fields in the feed.”

I’ve tried this, and it works like the documentation says. So, if you modify your CSV file, and re-import, you’ll get duplicates, or nothing, depending on what’s set as “unique”.

If Andrew (or someone) would modify the plugin or make a similar one called something like “CSVUpdate” so it COULD be used for updates, I would be jumping for joy.

Debra, thanks for pointing this out. I have edited my previous entry. Sorry - I was importing the same data file over and over and failed to notice it was just skipping those entries.

Hi

I’m having trouble importing entries. It looks like the plugin needs an encloser. Excel does not save CSV’s with enclosers, so I’m a bit stuck!

Richard

Try adding an encloser=”QUOTE” or encloser=”’”. The parameter is now required by the PHP function the plugin uses, but I think it will ignore it if the file does not need it. (I think…)

Andrew

I just ran a little test with the PHP function fgetcsv(), which is what CSVGrab uses. I tried two .csv files, one with quotes, and one without, and set the enclosure to ‘”’. It did parse and read both files correctly, so Andrew’s surmise is correct. (At least for PHP 5.2.6, which is what I’m using.)

Interestingly, if I set the enclosure to ” (empty string), I get PHP warnings: “enclosure must be a character”

Thanks for the responses. I am having some success using encloser=”QUOTE”, but not with nothing in it.

Andrew, was that a typo above, or did you really mean:

encloser=”‘“

We need to build a product that allows members to upload csv files into a weblog. They will be uploading more than 150 files weekly.

Can csvgrab be used with cron so we don’t have to take the manual step of going to the page to call the function? I asked a similar question on the FeedGrab board to use with a different product. I tried the EE cron plugin on FeedGrab, but so far I haven’t been able to make it work.

Yes, I use cron to call the plugin. Set up the template as you would normally, and then get the cronjob to access the web page using something like wget or lynx, eg,

wget http://yoursite.com/index.php/your-template-group/your-import-timeplate

Thanks, Andrew. And thanks for those plugins. I think we will be able to use them for some interesting projects.

Quick question, Does the revised plugin support the auto increment feature when it detects a duplicate title being imported.

Basically i’m trying to import 3673 entries, but due to some of them having the same title, it is importing 1763.

Is there a way for the current version of the plugin to import the same title, but modify the url_title.

I noticed there is now a ‘unique’ parameter option, but I do not think it applies to this case… I could be mistaken..

any thoughts?

— andrew thanks so much for developing this plugin, and your continued work into it..—

The unique parameter does tell the plugin what to look at to determine if an entry is a duplicate.

It defaults to using the title and date, so try setting it to a custom field that will always be different.

worked great andrew! thanks again…

Hi

Im not sure if this is the right place to post this sorry if its not, i followed the tutorial on how to set up the CSVGrab, but when i have gone to test I get the following error (swapped site name for mysite)

Warning: fopen(mysite/DFS.csv) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Connection refused in /home/sites/mysite/public_html/office/plugins/pi.csvgrab.php on line 192

Warning: fgetcsv(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in mysite/public_html/office/plugins/pi.csvgrab.php on line 202

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in mysite/public_html/office/plugins/pi.csvgrab.php on line 478

am i missing something??

L

It looks like the plugin is not finding the CSV file.

Try using a URL (eg, http://msysite.com/mycsvfile.csv) or an absolute path (eg, /home/youracct/mycsvfile.csv)