Question

Photo of Ken Roach

0

How set Person and Family Guid in SampleData xml used for importing data?

2

If the SampleData xml file can be used as a mechanism for importing data, what should the Family and Person Guid's be set to in the SampleData.xml file?

David has previously replied to this question - "If your [import] data is in SQL you can use NEWID() to create a new Guid for each row of data. That's not particulary user-friendly, so we could add some code to that SampleData block to generate new Guid's on the fly. I'll create an issue for that."

This is a follow up question: I'm now preparing my own xml file for a trial import, so I'm just wondering how this is going to work? Should I leave the guid blank in my xml file? 

Has this issue been actioned so that we can trial importing our own SampleData files?  (I couldn't see the issue in GitHub.)

  • Photo of Nick Airdo

    1

    This is a heartbreaker!  Just to be clear, the SampleData block was not designed/intended to be used as a mechanism for importing general data.  Its purpose was simply to give us a way to quickly load a very specific set of data so we could consistently test certain things and create consistent screenshots for documentation. The block expects certain things and won't really work at this point as a general data import tool.

    It really is breaking my heart that the beta doesn't have a general mechanism for importing data and that a few of our beta testers would like one. But, it is rather out of our scope at this time and is not something we are actioning on.  A developer in the community who has time-to-give is more than welcome to create a alternate block for this purpose.

  • Photo of David Stevens

    0

    Ken, I'm looking at building an XML plugin for Excavator that would allow you to import the XML file.  Is the new Guid issue the only one you've found so far?  Have you gotten a successful import of the sample data with your custom attributes?

    • Ken Roach

      Ken Roach

      That would be great, David! I haven't tried to import any of the sample data yet. I started to play with the sample data import until Nick's comment. Since then I've started to look at doing it directly into the database using SQL. (Would rather not go there, though.)


      Our requirements are simple: import the standard family attributes, custom family attributes, standard person attributes, and custom person attributes. We would be redeveloping all our other group structure from scratch. (Which is why the ability to 'allocate more than one person at a time to a group' would be really helpful.) And the relationship data we could rebuild manually.


      I have the skills to create a suitably structured xml file, but to make this even easier for others following, it would be great to be able to import from one flat csv file containing everything, or even better, two csv files - one for person, the other for family, where the first row of the csv files contain the xml mapping attribute names, and the two files contain a linking family ID which could be dropped after the import. This would remove the need for any skills other than Excel skills in preparing data for simple imports.


      I could write a doc on how to prepare those files, and make sure that the codes used (e.g. Title, Status etc) are already prepared in Rock prior to the import, if this helped.

      • David Stevens

        David Stevens

        Ok, I'll run that by the other guys and see what a CSV import would look like. I think multiple files would get complicated quickly... One CSV with family ID, family name, individual properties and any custom attributes would work though?