RichardSoeteman.net - UmbImport

CMSImport (PRO) 1.0.3 released

Richard Soeteman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:57:09 GMT

I’m very pleased to announce that CMSImport 1.0.3 is released. Now I can hear you think CMSImport? Must be a fork of the great UmbImport package. No this isn’t the case. A few weeks back Niels (AKA @Umbraco) asked me to change the name since Umbraco HQ got a lot of requests about this package. So now the name is CMSImport and that’s not going to change anymore.

CMSImport PRO

Finally we’ve finished our commercial edition of CMSImport. CMSImport PRO gives you all the options of the default package and the following extra features:

Update Content
Save Import Steps
Schedule imports for a certain time and day

Pricing

You can buy a single domain license of CMSImport. With a single domain license you are allowed to use CMSImport PRO for a single domain and all subdomains, such as www.example.com, accept.example.com, and local.example.com.

We also have a Enterprise license available. With an Enterprise license you are allowed to install the CMSImport PRO on unlimited production web servers, and use it for unlimited Umbraco instances within the Enterprise.

A single domain license will be available for 99 Euro, an enterpise license for 389 euro.

When you buy a license you’ll get free updates within 90 days of purchase and free updates for all minor releases within a major release. For example, if you purchased a 1.0 version of CMSImport, you get free updates of all 1.x versions through our client area.

Special 1.0 offer.When you buy the 1.0 release you’ll get a free update to 2.x. This is a 1.0 offer only!

What’s more in this release?

Several issues are solved in this release(both in the free and Pro release):

"item with the same key already added" error when using duplicate column names
Automapping column names
The imported document creator is not always the administrator anymore. It's using the logged in user now. When you schedule an import you can select the user that should be used as the creator of the document
Special characters in CSV are now supported, we’ve changed the reader from ANSI text to Unicode
Sometimes CSV replaced spaces with empty strings, this is solved now
With member import you can now merge any member property into the template. Simply surround the member property with [#(property here)]
Using a renamed Umbraco folder. This is possible now, although it will be better to change it after install, otherwise you have to install manually.
We’ve removed the limitation to allow only one DataAdapter. We are thinking to build a DataAdapter pack which contains adapters to import from wordpress, Rss, Outlook, excel etc. These adapters will be available for free in the Commercial Edition and for a small fee for the Free edition.

Roadmap

In the 1.x version we will add the following functionality:

FieldAdapters. Sounds boring but this is a big thing. When you import data now, sometimes the import will fail. For example if you import boolean as text (true/false) and want to store that in a True/False field in Umbraco it will fail. Umbraco expects that the value will be 0/1. FieldAdapters will solve this problem. If a insert of data fails. CMSImport will check if 1 o more FieldAdapters are available to convert the data in the right format. This will be added to version 1.1 which must be ready before CodeGarden 2010.
Dictionary Import. Need I say more?
Hierarchical imports(PRO only).

In the 2.x version we will add the following functionality:

Hierarchical import support in Data Adapters. Not the same as the 1.x Hierarchical import feature ;-)
Export/import definitions (PRO only). An easy way to deploy Import definitions

More Info

For more info, download, or purchase you’ll go to http://www.cmsimport.com/

UmbImport V1 released

Richard Soeteman — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:43:08 GMT

I'm very pleased to announce that I finally released the V1 version of UmbImport. For those of you who don't know what UmbImport is:

UmbImport helps you import content or members from any datasource into Umbraco. The following datasources are supported by default:

SQL Server
CSV file
XML file

You can also create your own custom DataAdapter. Check out the following links to screencasts to see the power of UmbImport.

The package is added to our.umbraco.org the new Umbraco community site , so you can download it there or use the UmbImport site. On our.umbraco.org you will find a forum also where you can drop your questions/feature requests/ bugs etc. In August I will release a manual also. If you find any issues please report it on the forum or comment on this post.

Create a custom data adapter for UmbImport part 1

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:02:37 GMT

The source code is updated for CMSImport 1.0.3, download it at the bottom of this post!

As I mentioned earlier it's possible to create a custom data adapter which can be plugged into umbImport. The free edition supports one custom data adapter, the pro edition will support multiple adapters. In this multi part series I will demonstrate how you can create your own data adapter by building an RSS import adapter. In this first part we will create the basic adapter in later post we will refine the functionality. For this first part I've installed Umbraco 4.0.1 and the packages Blog4Umbraco and UmbImport beta 1.

Create the adapter

You can create a custom data adapter by deriving from two classes:

UmbImportLibrary.BaseTypes.ImportDataAdapter.
UmbImportLibrary.BaseTypes.ImportDataUI.

The ImportDataAdapter class provides the real communication to the datasource and holds a reference to the ImportDataUI class which is responsible for the user input. For our RSS import adapter we will start by creating the UI class.

 1:  public class RSSDataAdapterUI
: ImportDataUI

 2:  {

 3:  private Panel _rssContentPanel
= new Panel();

 4:  private Literal _selectRssSourceLiteral
= new Literal();

 5:  private TextBox _rssLocation
= new TextBox();

6:

 7:  protected override void OnInit(EventArgs
e)

 8:  {

 9:  base.OnInit(e);

10:

 11:  _rssContentPanel.ID = "RssContentPanel";

 12:  _selectRssSourceLiteral.ID = "SelectRssSourceLiteral";

 13:  _selectRssSourceLiteral.Text = "Specify
the RSSLocation";

 14:  _rssLocation.ID = "RssLocation";

 15:  _rssLocation.Width = 400;

 16:  _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("


"
));
 17:  _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(_selectRssSourceLiteral);
 18:  _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(">

"
));
 19:  _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(_rssLocation);
 20:  _rssContentPanel.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("
example http://feeds.feedburner.com/umbracoblog >
>
>
"));
 21:  
 22:  this.Controls.Add(_rssContentPanel);
 23:  }
 24:  
 25:  /// 


 26:  /// Returns the Datasource
 27:  /// >

 28:  public override string DataSource
 29:  {
 30:  get
 31:  {
 32:  return _rssLocation.Text;
 33:  
 34:  }
 35:  }
 36:  }




The OnInit method generates the form. The only real interesting thing in this class
is the datasource property. This will be used in UmbImport to initialize the import
with the selected datasource.



 1:  public class RSSDataAdapter
: ImportDataAdapter
 2:  {
 3:  private ImportDataUI
_xmlImportUI;
 4:  
 5:  /// 


 6:  /// Alias of the import adapter
 7:  /// >

 8:  public override string Alias
 9:  {
 10:  get { return "RssImport";
}
 11:  }
 12:  
 13:  /// 


 14:  /// Get XML Data
 15:  /// >

 16:  /// 



 17:  public override IDataReader
GetData()
 18:  {
 19:  return XmlToDataReader(DataSource, "//item");
 20:  }
 21:  
 22:  /// 


 23:  /// Validates the selected
datasource
 24:  /// >

 25:  public override bool Validate()
 26:  {
 27:  bool result = false;
 28:  try
 29:  {
 30:  using (IDataReader
datareader = XmlToDataReader(DataSource, "//item"))
 31:  {
 32:  result = true;
 33:  }
 34:  }
 35:  catch
 36:  {
 37:  result = false;
 38:  }
 39:  return result;
 40:  }
 41:  
 42:  /// 


 43:  /// Holds a reference to the
UI control of the adapter
 44:  /// >

 45:  public override ImportDataUI
UIControl
 46:  {
 47:  get
 48:  {
 49:  if (_xmlImportUI == null)
 50:  {
 51:  _xmlImportUI = new RSSDataAdapterUI();
 52:  _xmlImportUI.ID = "RssImport";
 53:  }
 54:  return _xmlImportUI;
 55:  }
 56:  }
 57:  }




The Alias property will return the unique alias that we can use to select our adapter
during the Import process. The GetData method will return a datareader initialized
with the datasource. When importing XML it needs to be converted to a datareader first.
The ImportDataAdapter Base class has a method XmlToDataReader what will convert the
xml file to a datareader. The Validate method will check if the selected datasource
is valid. The UIControl property holds a reference to the RSSDataAdapterUI class.
The ImportDataAdapter base class has more properties/methods that you can override
but for this data adapter we are done.


When you compile the project and put the DLL in the bin folder of the Umbraco install
the DLL will be picked up automatically by UmbImport.



Using the RSS import adapter


When you start UmbImport you will see in step 2 that you can select the RssImport
data adapter


 


In the next step we will see the form that we have created in the RSSDataAdapterUI
class. Here we can specify the RSS location.


 


In the Next step we can specify the location where to store the blogposts (Note: When
using the Blog package blogposts will be arranged by data automatically) and we select
the blogpost as document type. In step 5 we will create the mapping between the fields
from the RSS feed and the Umbraco Document Properties. You will see a lot of other
fields from the RSS Feed. Just ignore them for now. In a later post we will filter
the columns.


 

The result


When you click next and next again on the confirm screen the RSS feed will be imported. 


 


In the next post I will show you how to Import the comment data with the same Adapter.
I will also show you how to filter the columns for the property mapping dropdowns.
When you want to play with this import adapter then download
the source here.




New Beta version of UmbImport
Richard Soeteman — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:17:38 GMT

Exactly 1 year ago I've downloaded Umbraco for
the very first time and loving it ever since. One package that I've created in September
last year was UmbImport. While that was a cool package I'm happy to announce that
today I've released a new beta version of UmbImport. The most requested feature was
the ability to import members. I'm happy to announce that this feature is implemented
now. Below you find  a screencast that demo's the member import.


 


Import members using umbImport from Richard
Soeteman on Vimeo.

More changes


While member import is the biggest thing, it's nice to know what's also changed since
the last version. I will be blogging about each feature/change the next coming weeks.





DataAdapters. The previous version of UmbImport only supported three
datasources (Sql Server, CSV and XML). With the new version you can plugin your own
datasource by creating a custom DataAdapter (in the free version this will be limited
to 1). 


Events during import. Events are added that you can handle in your
custom code that notify you when a record is imported. 


No more Dashboard control. UmbImport is moved from a dashboard control
to a tree in the menu. 


Better install experience. With Umbraco 4 it's easier to create a
package and modify config files etc via PackageActions. UmbImport uses default and
Custom package actions to improve the install experience. 


What's next?


Within a few weeks I hope to get V1 released and have proper documentation that describe
the functionality. After that I will work on UmbImport PRO, which will contain a few
extra features such as save wizard steps, scheduled imports, automatic field mapping,
support for more than 1 custom DataAdapter and more... The PRO version of UmbImport
will not be free(prices are not available yet). 


As always I hope that you like the package which you can download
here