.csv import is ignoring the events category column

[Josh]

Hey Alison,

I apologize for the delayed response here. I’ve updated your license so that it doesn’t expire until April. I’ll follow up over the weekend with more information from testing.

Thanks!

[Josh]

Hey Alison,

After doing a few tests and reviewing the source code on this one, I’m not sure the existing importer will work for your needs here. Currently, the importer matches based on title and event start/end times/date. If those 3 match, it is assumed to be the same event and gets updated.

To use the built-in importer currently, the simplest approach would be to add an identifier to the event title for the location.

An alternative would be to look at other importer plugins such as https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-all-import/ which may be a little more flexible in this regard.

I’ll reach out to the team on this one as well. I can definitely see the use for this particular example, however I also see the usefulness/need for it to work the way it currently does.

I apologize for any inconvenience with this one.

Thanks!

 

[Alison]

Hi Josh,

So when you say with the “existing importer” do you mean that with the most current update that this functionality changed? Because as I’ve stated before we were able to use the importer with this setup perfectly fine without any issues before December 2015. I would like to know if you could incorporate that functionality again since we base our calendars filtering off of the event categories. If the importer doesn’t recognize event categories what is the point of them?

I would like to just use the events calendar plugin and not have to use a plugin on top of another plugin and troubleshoot this issue when it use to work this way before the update. I’m sure others would agree that this is a necessary function needed for the .csv importer.

Please advise.
Alison

[Josh]

Hey Alison,

I went back and looked at version 3.12.x of our core plugin and the CSV importer and reviewing the code there, it looks like it still has the same title, start date, end date check that would cause the events to be updated rather than created.

I then noticed that your site currently has Events Calendar Pro at version 3.10.1 however, it appears based on your system info that you had updated to the latest versions of the plugin previously. Is this accurate? If so, was the import the reason you reverted back to the older version of the plugin? I don’t think this is the reason for the import troubles here, but having mismatched versions of Pro and the main Events Calendar plugin would most likely have some broken features across the site. In this case, there are items that are part of the import that do get filtered in Pro so there could be some misfiring there with the mismatched versions.

Anyway, I did check the importer for version 3.10 of the core plugin and again saw the same check for whether or not to create or update a new entry using the Title, Start & EndDate.

Out of curiosity as well, do you happen to have an older CSV from when the import worked as expected previously?

Thanks!

[Alison]

This reply is private.

[Alison]

This reply is private.

[Josh]

Hey Alison,

Thanks for clarifying and providing the updated system info.

Sorry for the confusion on the explanation as well. The check I’ve been describing isn’t on the full import, it is at the start of the import and it determines whether to import the event as a new event or import the event as an update to an existing event.

Also, thanks for providing these older CSV files. I’ll test them as well and see if there were any differences that we could take advantage of moving forward.

Thanks!

[Alison]

Hi Josh,

I tested the import with both core and pro at version 4.0.7 and the same issue occured.

Thank you
Alison

[Josh]

Hey Alison,

I’ve tested on the previous import files that you’ve provided as well. Seemed to be a little less overwriting, however this was mainly due to there being different times and data associated with the events. The events that had the same title, start and end dates were still importing as expected with them being overwritten.

I’m adding a feature request to our internal system here that I think will help with these imports. We still want to keep the same check so we’re not importing duplicated events. However, when there is different information down the line, such as a different event category, to have the category added to the existing pre-checked categories.

Thanks!

[Alison]

Hi Josh,

That sounds perfect! When do you think this will be implemented? This next month is coming up soon and I want to make sure that we can upload these calendars before April begins if at all possible.

Thank you again for all of your help on this. I believe this would be a very helpful feature moving forward.

Alison

[Josh]

Hey Alison,

No problem. Happy to pass the request along.

I’m not sure when this would be implemented, however we are looking at the possibility of overhauling our approach to imports and this will definitely get looked at when this happens.

Thanks!

[Alison]

Hi Josh,

I understand thank you. Just wondering what will happen when the extended license runs out on April 10th and the issue still hasn’t been resolved what will happen?

Thank you,
Alison

[Josh]

Hey Alison,

I’ll extend the license for another month. By that time there should be a response on the internal feature request ticket that I’ve created and you should be notified here.

Thanks!

[Alison]

Hi Josh,

Thank you that would be great!

Alison

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Alison,

I’m just chiming in on behalf of Josh who is currently out of the office to thank you for your patience and understanding throughout this thread.

We really appreciate it.

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Author]

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