cellear's picture

Posted by cellear on Tue, Feb 25, 2020 - 10:12am --- Updated: Feb 25 '20 - 11:17am

One of the disincentives for people trying Backdrop is the worry that they'll spend lots of time and money setting up a system based on it, and then later finding themselves prevented from using a different system because their data is locked away in a proprietary format.  We should ease these fears, by making it easy for data to get in and out.

To import data, a variation on Feeds module would do the trick.  It wouldn't need to have all the customizability of feeds -- it doesn't need to poll, doesn't have to support multiple file formats, doesn't need to be infinitely configurable.  It could be built into the content type definition screen.

To export data, it would be enough to simply create a CSV file for each content type, term, user, and comment type, as well as the necessary CMI information to create it.  

Wordpress supplies this kind of capability, to a degree, in its generic interface:

Most helpful answers

@kwikstrt, did you try this

@kwikstrt, did you try this one? Did it work for you?

https://backdropcms.org/project/views_data_export

Views data export module

  • Views data export module provides complete functionality to export data in .csv.    
  • Feeds module, as you mentioned, provides import

It is very important for users to know that they are not locked in, so PR around this issue would be great. 

Comments

jenlampton's picture

Thu, Jun 04, 2020 - 2:08pm by jenlampton

Though the community agreed that this topic is important, the PMC has not chosen it as one of the first official Backdrop initiatives. Only two proposals have been selected, so more are likely to be added in the future. Please keep this topic in mind for the next proposal process, which will be shortly after 1.17 is released. 

Tue, Oct 26, 2021 - 8:19pm by Irina Zaks

  • Views data export module provides complete functionality to export data in .csv.    
  • Feeds module, as you mentioned, provides import

It is very important for users to know that they are not locked in, so PR around this issue would be great. 

Mon, Jan 23, 2023 - 10:14am by kwikstrt

I'm a big fan of the module Views_data_export and I'm very frustrated by experiencing that it totally didn't work in Drupal 9 and 10 (if it even gets accepted in Drupal 10, many of similar CSV export modules don't)

I created a nice database of books for a library in Drupal 7, now 7 years ago.It took some study on Feeds to import all the books (4500), but it went great.

And as a much peace-giving thought, there was also Views Data Export to generate a copy of the (ever growing) database in CSV-format, so the circle was round. That's also what made the import of the books in the new Drupal 9 website a breeze...

But when it came to Views Data Export, the desillusion was big: nothing seems to work (it generates at best a mention: "The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later''. Same story for alternatives as Content_export_csv and entity_content_export.

(The first two don't work, the third is not accepted in Drupal 10; I tried everything)

As I'm not trusting a drupal 'upgrade' system that is not capable to save such an important database, I can't rely on Drupal anymore (when it becomes necessary to migrate from D7, although it works fine now)

 

So my question is: does export in CSV format (with Views Data Export or equivalent) WORKS in BACKDROP?

 

(sorry, I'm aware that this question doesn't fit in this 'Initiatives' section! But I couldn't find any other topic about this elsewhere... Happy to post it elsewhere if necessary!)

Thanks for some

Mon, Jan 23, 2023 - 11:06am by kwikstrt

Whoa, Thanks (also for the fast reaction!), it's VERY encouraging that this is implementable in Backdrop!