If you have a lot of flash material that you want to import, or you have files that are too large to upload via HTTP, then you might want to use the flash node import feature. This can be found under Administer > Content management > Import flash.

The import routine lets you get round your PHP upload limit provided you can put the files on your server by some other mechanism, such as FTP. Because it scans for all files that are not already in the database you can rapidly import many swf / flv / mp3 files in one go. You can choose to have imported content set to be published, or unpublished, depending whether you want to edit the content before making it available.

When an import is requested flash node will scan the flash directory (usually located under files/flash, unless the default has been changed) and it will recurse in to any sub-directories, but it will exclude any directory it finds called temp.

The import page will then provide a list of all the files (irrespective of extension) that were found. Check those that are to be imported and then click 'Import checked files'. A confirmation form appears - click the Import button to start the import.

Each file will be imported in turn and a flashnode created for each one. The title will be the name of the file that was imported. The newly created nodes will have the publishing options (sticky, promote to front page, comment settings) that are set as the normal flash node content defaults. The exception to these defaults is the publishing status - this is set on the flash node settings page and the default is unpublished. The author of each node will be set as the user who is running the import.

When the import is complete you are redirected to the content management page so you can easily open or edit the nodes that were created. Once files are imported they are added to the database so they will not appear for selection in future imports.

Note - as the files are imported flash node will try to automatically determine the height and width of each one, and this is usually successful. However, if any imported content doesn't seem to be displaying then check that the height and width have been assigned a value by editing the affected node and looking under Basic flash node options.

The ability to use import can be granted to other user roles by flash node administrators.