Module Migrator

[adrian]

It's definitely getting closer to being ready diogo.

To be honest I hadn't really thought about automatically capturing changes - I kinda thought that was already in the works here:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/2117-continuous-integration-of-field-and-template-changes/

PTM is structured so that everything that is exported is based on the content of a parent page - all the child pages, templates, fields, page field content pages, etc. So it is designed to migrate new blocks of content. It can certainly update changes to these blocks to a live server too though.

I guess it might be possible to make what you are saying work by using "Home" as the parent page of the export, so changes to the entire site are migrated. The automatic recording of changes so that the JSON file only contains changes is obviously the tricky part I'll read through mindplay.dk's experience in detail and see what suggestions I can garner. Off the top of my head I am thinking that maybe a simple approach might work - use the module's config data field to store and add to an array of pages, fields, and templates that change, captured whenever they are saved. That way I am not trying to record exactly what all the changes are, but rather just that something changed and therefore we should add that page/field/template to the list of things that needs to be exported.

I'll think about it some more!

[Nico Knoll]

Do you added the hookable stuff we talked about already?  

So I could publish my module too

[adrian]

Hey Nico,

Sorry, I haven't done that yet - I actually thought you had some more stuff to do on your module around image importing and RTE embedding.

I am super busy at the moment, but I'll see if I can get the hookable part sorted out for you in the next few days. Diogo's ideas actually got me a little sidetracked because I really want to add that functionality now too

I'll PM you more thoughts to avoid spamming people here.

[diogo]

Sorry for deviating you from your track, but it's great to hear that

[Russell]

As someone new to Processwire, I just wanted to say what a godsend this module will be. I've just started a new site using PW and Foundation, and was wondering how I could get the blog profile integrated as part of it, without setting up all the data structures and copying code manually, and here you've done it already!

I'll still have to do all the css and a lot of php changes, but this should take care of all the field/template/page setup that I need. I can see lots of other uses for this, as a way to copy/paste bits and pieces from other sites as well.

Should I just use the blog file you've included in this thread, or would it be better to setup a dummy site with the standard blog profile, and use this module to migrate?

Great job!

[adrian]

Hi Russell,

Glad you'll find it useful. It's still a bit of a work in progress, but I hope to dedicate some more time to it shortly to get the final pieces in place.

If I were you I would use the blog file included in this thread because it is already modified to work as a child page, rather than needing to be the home page. Then play with the css as needed, ideally taking the blog specific bits from the imported css files and putting them into your main css files and changing the paths in the template files to those main css files. No matter what you do you'll need to make some css changes to match your site.

Good luck and please let us know how you go.

[Russell]

OK, I seem to be having a little trouble importing. I've followed the step by step you posted with the blog profile, but it keeps coming back saying

"Missing required parent page. This must be selected if you want to import the pages in addition to field and template creation."

I've tried twice, and I have selected my "Home" page, which is my top level page, 3 times. Even when I just select "fields and templates" it's still giving me the same message.

Just on the question of data or templates, I do want a clean slate, but will just templates give me everything I need to start fresh?

Here's a screenshot of my last attempt

[adrian]

Russell,

Really sorry about that - I made some significant changes to the form processing in the last version and it looks it was having some issues with session variables which is why it wasn't remembering the parent you selected. I have implemented a quick fix and tested the blog install at my end and it seems to be working fine here. I will revisit things properly before the next version, but please test the latest version from github and let me know how it goes.

Thanks.

[Russell]

Thanks. Been out today. Will try tomorrow. Can I follow up on the "templates only" option? Would it be better to copy with data, and delete the data, or templates only, and then create the pages myself, using a dummy site to look at a populated version to get an idea of how it all works?

[adrian]

You should use the full migration option because you want the parent blog page, the categories and tags parents etc to be created. The blog.zip only comes with 5 posts, 2 categories, and 6 tags, so a full migration and then deletion of that content would be very quick. 

[Russell]

Ok just gave it a run. So far it seems like it loaded OK. The first thing that worried me was, I saw it overwrote admin.php, which kind of freaked me out. A couple other top level files it says were loaded too, but are they the ones that have gone into the markup sub-dir?

I also put it under my "articles" pages, but then it put a "blog" sub-page under that. I guess I should have done it at my home page, and then renames blog to articles? Not sure if I need to delete what was imported, and try again at the proper level, or whether it's easier to try and move the blog stuff up a level. That's the PW newbie in me talking, I'm sure a bit of reading will sort that out

[adrian]

Yeah, no need to freak out, the admin.php that got copies across goes into the markup subdir, so it's all good

Ideally it should have been installed into your Home as the parent, which would have created "blog" as a child of home. I would definitely suggest trying by moving blog to have home as its parent, deleting articles and then renaming blog to articles. I think this should work just fine.

Let us know how you go.

I probably need some detailed examples with this module that show just how the structure is copied and installed. That will come (maybe a video even) once I find some time to finalized things.

Great to have you testing things though.

[Oliver]

Adrian, this is definitely a module a lot of people have been waiting for! Thanks for this!

Adrian, this module sounds more and more useful everytime. Next thing, you will be creating a "recording" mode that collects all changes that happen in PW during a certain period and makes it possible to export them as json to make late changes on published sites really easy! (did that sound like a suggestion?)

+1 for this one. Especially when you’re collaborating with another developer on a project it is hard to keep track with each other’s changes to templates, fields, etc. without passing on countless db dumps with every commit. It would be great to have a module–even if I think it should be a separate and specialized one–documenting such changes in importable text/json/haml files. Similar to migrations used with Rails.

[adrian]

Well I don't have the recording mode done yet, but thanks to Nico we now have the ability to migrate content from a Wordpress site into PW.

Firstly, this module has been renamed - now it is simply: "Migrator" https://github.com/adrianbj/ProcessMigrator so please uninstall your old one and install this new version.

The module now supports 3rd party plugin modules for migrating content from other sources. The first one is: MigratorWordpress: https://github.com/NicoKnoll/MigratorWordpress

Here's what it looks like in action. Not much action in that screenshot I know, but you can see how MigratorWordpress adds in a new data source option (a WordPress xml export file). There are instructions on exporting in the MigratorWordpress readme.

For those of you who still have access to a WordPress site, simply run WP's built in exporter, then import the resulting xml file into Migrator. At the moment the Wordpress site needs to still be live because any embedded images are installed to PW from their full existing URL.

Also if you have ideas for other plugins, please feel free to start coding  If there is interest I'll write a guide defining what is required for the module to be recognized by Migrator and also about the JSON schema that is required.

So please test out and let us know how things go.

[adrian]

This forum needs a way to spread the love to the person who really deserves it - in this case, Nico!

Maybe this would help a little:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/6373-mention-system-for-the-forums/

[Nico Knoll]

Well I'm happy that it works. That's enough for me

[adrian]

I have added a new option called "Changes since" in the export dialog.

This is very basic at the moment and put together quickly, but it allows you to specify a date/time which will limit the exported json to only content that has changed since then.

It's certainly not the most efficient approach in that it will export the entire page, even if just the content of one field has changed. I don't expect this should be much of an issue, but it might seem wasteful if you have a page with a lot of images or files, but you only changed one small text field, because it will copy all those images/files again.

Unlike most fields, image/file fields have created/modified fields in the DB tables, so I should be able to improve this fairly easy - something for the next version

[totoff]

Adrian pointed me to his great module today because I have to migrate a WP blog to PW. I managed to import Ryan's blog profile and with Nico's extension the posts from the WP install.

Unfortunately neither comments nor categories and tags made it from WP to PW - only the posts. Upon export I chose posts->all, categories->all, status->published. I checked the XML file and all data is there as it should but wasn't completely imported to PW.

Any ideas? 

Many thanks!

[Nico Knoll]

Have you checked if the categories aren't imported or only not assigned?

FYI: Comments aren't working right now but they are WIP

[adrian]

totoff,

Thanks for the feedback. I have just taken a look at the test wordpress xml file Nico and I were testing with and compared it to one I exported from a different WP blog and there are differences related to tags and categories.

The test xml we were working with definitely imported both tags and categories correctly and assigned them to posts with an ASM select field perfectly, so I am sure we can get this sorted out. I will probably continue the discussion with Nico via PM, but hopefully we'll get back to you in the next couple of days with a solution.

As far as I know you are the first person to test the WP import functionality so apologies for it not going fully as expected.

[totoff]

Hi adrian and nico,

many thanks for your quick and kind replies. Glad that my feedback could be helpful. Unfortunately the XML file is customer data, otherwise I would give it to you for testing purposes.

@nico no, it didn't import the categories neither the tags. I first imported the blog profile successful giving me tags and categories and than the WP-XML. But it left the categories and tags pages untouched.

[Nico Knoll]

Could you try import it in a clean instalation? Without ryan's blog profile? Normally it should create everything by itself.

[Nico Knoll]

Well I updated it to the new WXRparser and now it should work. Even if you are using Ryan's Blog profile. Maybe even better with it than without it

[totoff]

Nico,

not sure if we shouldn't open a new thread for that. Maybe moderation can do this in case this is the wrong place to discuss the WP importer.

However, I did try first on a clean install - with the same result: Only posts, nothing else. Therefore I thought it might have to have the blog profile first in order to install the functionality required.

Do I understand you right, that it - if everything works - the module may not only import the data from WP but will also "install" all required code to run a blog?

Thanks!

[totoff]

Nico,

did try on a clean install just a few minutes ago. Got an error. See screenshot.

Got posts, categories and tags imported. Testing.