Aggregator – How are changed events determined?

[Rodrigo Torres]

I’m looking to use Aggregator to schedule recurring imports from CSV files.

I have three CSV files Events.csv, Venues.csv, and Organizers.csv each have about 400 rows.

Those files will get updated nightly with the new batch of events, venues, and organizers. Most of them will be the same, but some events will be gone (cancelled) or others moved (from one date to another).

Is there a unique key that Aggregator uses to tell if an event has changed?
Is it the Event Name, Venue Name, Organizer Name respectively?
Can I change that to be a different field (such as an ID field I would add through Pro)?

Also not sure how to handle events that are gone from the list to have them automatically deleted.

Thanks for any help!
Rodrigo

[Brook]

Howdy Rodrigo,

Our CSV Importer does its best to find duplicates based on the name and date of the event. If it finds a preexisting event with a matching name and date it will then update it, if it does not find such a thing it will create a new event.

For organizers and venues it simply matches by name. If the name changes in your CSV then a new organizer or venue will be created.

I love the idea of adding a Unique ID field to the CSV, so that it could update existing events even when the name or date changes. However that’s not a feature that has been suggested before to my knowledge. I’d be happy to add it to our feature suggestion page if you are interested. For the sake of clarity many developers write feature requests in the form of “user stories”, and we do too. Here is what I was thinking for your needs:

I am a site admin regularly importing events, organizers, and venues from CSV files. The names of previously imported items are subject to change, along with all other details. Since each item in my CSV files has a Unique ID field, I would like the importer to match the Unique ID to previously imported items and update them, even when the name or date changes.

Does that sound like your “story”?

I should also mention that since the CSV files are on your computer, it is not possible to schedule a true recurring import using CSVs. You can manually import them as often as you like. But they can not be automatically imported, since the website will not have access to files stored on your computer with you first uploading them.

Does that all make sense and answer your questions?

Cheers!

– Brook

[Rodrigo Torres]

Yes, that’s my story.
I’m bummed because I signed up for the beta and then emails went to my spam and I totally missed being involved!

Oh, that’s my whole reason for buying aggregator was to automate the csv import. The csv can live anywhere, doesn’t have to be on my computer. In my current solution I simply update a file on the webserver with an automated ftp script. If Aggregator can pull from web sources for other types of imports I don’t understand why it can’t pull a csv file from the same server where the plugin is installed.

[Brook]

Howdy again,

I am sorry you did not get the beta emails. We are certainly not done developing Events Aggregator,  more features will be added. So you did not miss the boat there for requesting additions.

The reason CSV is not supported is because it is highly unusual for people to host a CSV and regularly update it. There is obvious utility in doing that, but it is the sort of use case that would be extremely rare. I would not be surprised if less than 1% of users would even think of such an idea. In that case 99% of users might prefer we spend our time elsewhere, since any feature we add must be retested each time we update our code, and maintained. Further a significant chunk of users can view that features as “bloat”, and if you add too many of those you can become the “bloated plugin” everyone hates.

We face this dilemma all of the time. Our solution to it is to gauge the amount of demand a feature has, but adding it to our feature request page. After a few months we can look back and weight it based on this metric.

This leaves you with two options:

1. Submit a feature request.
2. Build this as a customization.

It should be possible to build this as a customization. You could write a PHP script which fetches the files, and uploads it to WordPress. From there pass the file to our CSV importer. Then schedule this whole process as a cron script. Easier said than done, but very possible.

Oh, that’s my whole reason for buying aggregator was to automate the csv import. The csv can live anywhere, doesn’t have to be on my computer. In my current solution I simply update a file on the webserver with an automated ftp script. If Aggregator can pull from web sources for other types of imports I don’t understand why it can’t pull a csv file from the same server where the plugin is installed.

I am sorry if this was miscommunicated somewhere. I can definitely hook you up with a refund if you want. Just let me know if you want that.

Does that help clarify things?

Cheers!

– Brook

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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