module Introducing Data Migrator – Import SQL/CSV/JSON/XML into ProcessWire

[Mikel]

Hey, everyone, here at frameless we frequently work with clients who already have a website but aren't happy with it and want us to rebuild it from scratch. Whenever possible, we use ProcessWire for new web projects – no surprise there, given the flexibility and clean API we all love.

For smaller sites, migrating content is usually straightforward – a bit of copy/paste and you're done. But for larger projects with hundreds or thousands of records across multiple database tables, this quickly becomes tedious and error-prone.

Over the years, we've written various import scripts and parsers to handle these migrations. We finally decided to clean them up and package everything into a proper module that we'd like to share with the community.

Introducing: Data Migrator
Data Migrator is a Process module that imports external data (SQL dumps, CSV, JSON, XML) directly into ProcessWire's page structure – including automatic creation of templates, fields, and even PHP template files.

Key Features

• Multi-format support – Import from .sql, .csv, .json, and .xml files
• Automatic type detection – Recognizes emails, URLs, dates, booleans, integers, etc. and maps them to appropriate ProcessWire fieldtypes
• SQL schema parsing – Extracts column types from CREATE TABLE statements for better field mapping
• Foreign Key handling – Detects FK relationships and sorts tables by dependency order
• Dry Run mode – Preview exactly what will be created before committing anything
• Full Rollback – Undo an entire migration with one click (removes all created pages, templates, and fields)
• Template file generation – Automatically creates ready-to-use .php template files in /site/templates/

How it works

• Upload your data file (SQL dump, CSV, JSON, or XML)
• Review the analysis – the module shows detected tables, columns, suggested fieldtypes, and sample values
• Fine-tune if needed – override fieldtypes via dropdown, configure FK relationships
• Run a Dry Run to preview all changes
• Execute the migration – templates, fields, parent pages, and data pages are created automatically
• If something's wrong – hit Rollback to cleanly undo everything

Requirements
ProcessWire 3.0.0+
PHP 7.4+

Links
GitHub: github.com/frameless-at/ProcessDataMigrator
Modules Directory: /modules/process-data-migrator/

We've been using the methods and classes bundled in this module internally for a while now and it has saved us a lot of time on migration projects. We hope it's useful for others facing similar challenges. Feedback, bug reports, and feature requests are welcome!

Cheers,
Mike