Ingest (import) Question – Concatenating Fields

ANOTHER Question:

In Configuration, for Post Settings, you can choose either False or True for Auto Publish.

Does the Plugin just mark the Post as published, or does it also call the actual Post routine to publish the post?

The Theme I’m using has added extra features and options when posting/publishing and I would like to know if I set those options in a CSV file to be ingested/imported, that if the plugin does call the Post/Publish routine then I would expect (or hope!) those extra features are picked up during the ‘publishing’ routine so they can do the things they’re supposed to do.

Otherwise, after ingesting/importing the CSV file, I’ll need to Edit each newly created post to get the extra features/options to run normally.

Thanks!

Chris

the concatenating feature is possible if you can write a plugin to retrieve the postmeta values and concantenate them by the metakeys provided.
The auto publish feature uses wordpress post_status attribute of object post. https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/post_status?replies=4

As always, thanks for getting back so fast!

As for concatenating, rather than write another plugin, it would just be easier to have the CSV file contain the whole string in the field. lol

And for the auto publish, it’s as I thought: It only marks the post as published. That’s okay, I just wondered if it was possible to call or simulate an actual publish/update post as if you were in post edit mode.

Turns out that my Theme has custom functions (custom_add_save and update_custom_meta) that are called only when in post edit mode, for publishing/updating a post.

Chris

what is the value of post_status needed by the plugin?

Not sure what you’re asking…

The Theme I’m using is specific for videos, and as such, the Post Editor has an option to grab the first frame of the video to turn it into a .jpg picture file, adds it to the media library and then gives you the option to set that .jpg as the Featured Image.

But all of that must be done manually (though I would love to have it automated if possible somehow in conjunction with the CSV plugin).

Your CSV plugin is perfect for importing lists of videos (each video gets its own post) along with easily adding a video description, category and tag – but your plugin isn’t intended or designed to do the manual part because of the Theme’s custom Edit Post options.

It probably could be done, but it’s a specific need that is not really required by most others. I’m just happy and excited that your CSV plugin does what it does (once I figured out how to use it! lol)

So what I do is ingest WITHOUT publishing (pending state), then after injesting 100 video posts with your CSV plugin, I go to the Post Editor, sort by Pending, then edit each new post to (1) Click (the Theme option for) Set Video Image as Featured Image, and (2) Click Publish. Then I go to the next new post and repeat until all 100 videos have their Featured (video) Image set and are published.

It would save time if your plugin could automate the manual editing that is required because of the special Theme options for a post, but I don’t expect your plugin to accommodate another specialized plugin or theme.

Sorry if I go on too much, just want to make sure you have all the information you may want or need.

Chris

You do not have to do this. You can set the post to auto publish and provide the video image for post_thumbnail.

Yes and no…

See, the image IS NOT available UNTIL the Set as Featured Image option is clicked in the Edit Post…

I’m not creating or uploading images, as the Theme can do that automatically from the first frame of the video URL I provide, but it won’t do that until it’s been told to do it by clicking on Set as Featured Image. And until it’s created, I wouldn’t know what image to specify for a post_thumbnail.

See the dilemma now? What came first, the Chicken or the Egg? lol

Chris

is the video from youtube? if so you can use the api method below:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2068344/how-to-get-thumbnail-of-youtube-video-link-using-youtube-api

Yes it is…

Thanks! I’ll check out the link and do some research and testing as necessary to get it to work for me, if it can be done.

You’ve been very good about helping. Appreciate it.

I’ll close this as resolved.

Chris