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#1 2008-09-10 22:18:39

merz1
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From: Hamburg
Registered: 2006-05-04
Posts: 994
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Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

Just stumbled over an article at performancing.com which I consider being relevant for Textpattern.

How Portable Is Your Blog?

Ever stop to wonder how portable your blog is? I mean, you are using WordPress today but do you think you’ll be using WordPressa a year or two from now? What if you started on Drupal and then want to move to WordPress? This is the situation that Performancing is in and I find it rather archaic that many of these publishing systems or content management systems do little in the way of allowing users to export data. The closest I’ve been able to get with Drupal is by using what is called (Views) to create an RSS view for the past 2,500 posts. This doesn’t help me at all when there are thousands of posts from 2005-2008 published on the site. As I searched high and low on the Drupal module site looking for ways to export the content into at least an XML file, I came up empty handed. Considering XML has been around for awhile and it is 2008, I find it to be a joke that Drupal along with other publishing systems do not support the exporting of important content out of the box. Important content being tags, post meta data, post content and comments. (…)

The issue (read: feature request) is pretty obvious, isn’t it? Recommendations? Discussion?


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#2 2008-09-10 22:47:34

MattD
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From: Monterey, California
Registered: 2008-03-21
Posts: 1,254
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

The great thing about Textpattern is you can output your data in whatever format you want. If I wanted to transfer my Textpattern site to some other CMS I could easily make a page that output all of my articles in whatever format I need be it XML, CSV or anything else.


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#3 2008-09-10 23:17:15

variaas
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2005-01-16
Posts: 402
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

Yup – agree with MattD. It’s pretty easy to create a page to output (i.e. export) all your data.

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#4 2008-09-11 05:35:47

wet
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From: Schoerfling, Austria
Registered: 2005-06-06
Posts: 3,323
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

Economically speaking, exporting data is not a very valid business case. Importing data is.

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#5 2008-09-11 12:48:39

merz1
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From: Hamburg
Registered: 2006-05-04
Posts: 994
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

wet: Got your point. But seriously speaking the subject is a little bit more abstract. Or is the article too naive?
amit, mattd: Are you talking about creating a portable dataset via forms?


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#6 2008-09-11 15:54:01

MattD
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

merz1 wrote:

amit, mattd: Are you talking about creating a portable dataset via forms?

Yes.


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#7 2008-09-11 19:51:51

n2ce
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Registered: 2008-08-15
Posts: 8

Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

In general:

An export function should be the very first feature an application should have. It’s the user’s data. Why should I use an application, if it doesn’t allow me to change my mind later?

MattD schrieb:
Yes.

How’s that working? (I’m new to Textpattern)

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#8 2008-09-11 21:06:06

MattD
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From: Monterey, California
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

I haven’t needed to export articles so I haven’t proven it but I imagine you could easily modify your Textpattern pages and forms to output in some text format other than XHTML.


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#9 2008-09-11 22:32:31

jm
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Registered: 2005-11-27
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

I really don’t see the issue with portable data with regards to TXP, WP, Drupal, etc. The data is stored in a MySQL database, which is more flexible and easier to deal with than a monster XML file. So as wet said, it’s the import that matters most, since you can already export via MySQL.

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#10 2008-09-11 22:56:56

MattD
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

jm wrote:

…you can already export via MySQL.

that would be the simple way ;-)


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#11 2008-09-12 16:07:56

merz1
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From: Hamburg
Registered: 2006-05-04
Posts: 994
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

The ‘CMS data portability’ the article speaks about is not migrating from one CMS to another via database migration but via some kind of ‘portability standard’ (read: import-export interface).

To me it sounds like a call for one or more core interface formats to push content from one CMS platform to another.

If I remember XML and XSLT transformation right then a defined and expandable XML format can be used via an XSLT transformation (read: mapping data objects) to achieve data portability. In my understanding this is totally different from a DB export/report and a following data import.


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#12 2008-09-12 16:18:05

merz1
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From: Hamburg
Registered: 2006-05-04
Posts: 994
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Re: Export data (How portable is Textpattern?)

nsce “How’s that working? (I’m new to Textpattern)”

You can create a simple flatfile database of the standard content by creating an article form with the TXP template tags.

  • But it starts to get complicated if you want to ex-/import the comments and automatically add them to the right articles.
  • Or if you have to map TXP keywords to WordPress categories (If you want to do that).
  • Or you decide to port one section to Drupal and another to Joomla.
  • Or a forum article into TXP and the whole thread as comments appended to the new TXP article.

The question is not ‘why you wanted to do so’ but ‘how to achieve that kind of portability’.


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