Programmatically creating nodes with drupal_execute

Thank you very much for sharing your work with community.

:)
Beautifulmind

Great job sussing out that one! Pretty darn tricky...

Yep, I was doing the exact same type of import script but found myself ditching the need for updating the nodes after a few iterations.

I myself am quite aghast at the idea that the Drupal API pages contain everything BUT detailed and useful examples. Most programmers I know learn by example, not strictly by reverse engineering the function.

The Drupal API could learn a bit from the incredible usefulness of php.net API page comments and examples.....

...of course php.net could probably learn a few things from drupal ;)

--TechNinja

Oh and one more thing.. you probably shouldn't be importing the node functions (<?php module_load_include('inc', 'node', 'node.pages'); ?>) for every iteration of the loop through the record rows. Doing it once above the foreach should have you covered ;)

This saved me some major headaches, and is the best documentaion for creating multiple nodes I have come across.
I had missed out the $form_state['values']['op'] = t('Save'); in mine, so it wasn't saving the node. Doh!

Thanks again for this.

It's been a while since I did the same exact thing. If i remember correctly for custom modules you will have issues with the validate and submit handlers when submitting the form manually.

Another issues was in the submit handler (of the custom module) if I would save the node it would run through an endless loop or submit it twice.

Some points to watch out for-

@wdmartin

Thanks for the example, I found this post while looking to answer the "updating with drupal_execute" question on a similar thread about programatically creating nodes. I'm curious about the $form_state['node'] value and wanted to run my findings by you and see if we can come up with a definitive example for programatically updating a node. Perhaps we can also look into updating the API to show an example.

You pointed out the need for

<?php
  $form_state['node'] = (array) $node
?>

I did not seem to need to set this array value to update a single node. So, I looked at the node_form API and noticed, as you did, that the function does check for the presence of $form_state['node'] . If $form_state['node'] doesn't exist it simply uses the $node parameter. If $form_state['node'] does exist then it merges it with a casted $node parameter.

In your original update example a copy of the $node variable is cast into an array called $form_state['node'] . It seems by the time we reach the node_form() function the $node object and $form_state['node'] array could be duplicates, aside from one being an object and the other an array. Since $form_state['node'] is set it looks like the array merge

$node = $form_state['node'] + (array)$node;

is just merging two identical values and we end up with yet another identical copy of the node's values as an array. Then, a few lines latter it casts back to an object.

I didn't dig in any further to understand the use case for merging these arrays, but it doesn't appear necessary for doing an update with drupal_execute(). We seem to be doing a couple extra expense object to array and array to object casts.

Also, I admit I didn't test looping through multiple updates at once and my example content type do_dad uses only a small mix of CCK field types. Perhaps it is in one of these use cases that the $form_state['node'] becomes necessary with drupal_execute().

In short, I thank you again for point out a working example. I hope you would text my example below, only passing the node_load() value as the third parameter to drupal_execute() . Here's an example that worked to load an existing node/31 and update it's title, body, and set it to unpublished.

<?php
  $form_state = array();
  module_load_include('inc', 'node', 'node.pages');

  $node = node_load(31);  // load node # 31

  $form_state['values']['status'] = 0;  // unpublish the node

  $form_state['values']['title'] = 'My Newly Named Do Dad';
  $form_state['values']['body'] = 'Blah Blah Body of an Edited Do Dad Goes Here';

  $form_state['values']['name'] = 'admin';
  $form_state['values']['op'] = t('Save');  // this seems to be a required value 

$errs = drupal_execute('do_dad_node_form', $form_state, $node);
?>

OrangeCoat.com

Just to say big thanks to author. It helped me a lot.

// Author: Jingsheng Wang
// Email: skyred (^) live.com
// Date: Nov.18, 2008

<?php

define ( 'C_PPCSV_HEADER_RAW', 0 );
define ( 'C_PPCSV_HEADER_NICE', 1 );

class PaperPear_CSVParser {
	private $m_saHeader = array ();
	private $m_sFileName = '';
	private $m_fp = false;
	private $m_naHeaderMap = array ();
	private $m_saValues = array ();
	
	function __construct($sFileName) {
		//quick and dirty opening and processing.. you may wish to clean this up
		if ($this->m_fp = fopen ( $sFileName, 'r' )) {
			$this->processHeader ();
		}
	}
	
	function __call($sMethodName, $saArgs) {
		//check to see if this is a set() or get() request, and extract the name
		if (preg_match ( "/[sg]et(.*)/", $sMethodName, $saFound )) {
			//convert the name portion of the [gs]et to uppercase for header checking
			$sName = strtoupper ( $saFound [1] );
			
			//see if the entry exists in our named header-> index mapping
			if (array_key_exists ( $sName, $this->m_naHeaderMap )) {
				//it does.. so consult the header map for which index this header controls
				$nIndex = $this->m_naHeaderMap [$sName];
				if ($sMethodName {0} == 'g') {
					//return the value stored in the index associated with this name
					return $this->m_saValues [$nIndex];
				} else {
					//set the valuw
					$this->m_saValues [$nIndex] = $saArgs [0];
					return true;
				}
			}
		}
		
		//nothing we control so bail out with a false
		return false;
	}
	
	//get a nicely formatted header name. This will take product_id and make
	//it PRODUCTID in the header map. So now you won't need to worry about whether you need
	//to do a getProductID, or getproductid, or getProductId.. all will work.
	public static function GetNiceHeaderName($sName) {
		return strtoupper ( preg_replace ( '/[^A-Za-z0-9]/', '', $sName ) );
	}
	
	//process the header entry so we can map our named header fields to a numerical index, which
	//we'll use when we use fgetcsv().
	private function processHeader() {
		$sLine = fgets ( $this->m_fp );
		//you'll want to make this configurable
		$saFields = split ( ",", $sLine );
		
		$nIndex = 0;
		foreach ( $saFields as $sField ) {
			//get the nice name to use for "get" and "set".
			$sField = trim ( $sField );
			
			$sNiceName = PaperPear_CSVParser::GetNiceHeaderName ( $sField );
			
			//track correlation of raw -> nice name so we don't have to do on-the-fly nice name checks
			$this->m_saHeader [$nIndex] = array (C_PPCSV_HEADER_RAW => $sField, C_PPCSV_HEADER_NICE => $sNiceName );
			$this->m_naHeaderMap [$sNiceName] = $nIndex;
			$nIndex ++;
		}
	}
	
	//read the next CSV entry
	public function getNext() {
		//this is a basic read, you will likely want to change this to accomodate what
		//you are using for CSV parameters (tabs, encapsulation, etc).
		if (($saValues = fgetcsv ( $this->m_fp )) !== false) {
			$this->m_saValues = $saValues;
			return true;
		}
		return false;
	}
}

$o = new PaperPear_CSVParser ( '/home/greatbre/public_html/sites/default/files/import/TJS Account List.csv' );
while ( $o->getNext () ) {
	$node->field_account = array (array ('value' => $o->getAcct (), 'safe' => $o->getAcct () ) );
	$node->field_premise = array (array ('value' => $o->getOnOff (), 'safe' => $o->getOnOff () ) );
	$node->title = $o->getDBAname ();
	$node->created = time ();
	$node->status = 1; //published
	$node->promote = 0;
	$node->sticky = 0;
	$node->uid = 1;
	$node->format = 1;
	$node->readmore = FALSE;
	$node->body = '';
	$node->type = 'retailer'; //or whatever other content type you need
	$node->locations = array (array ('street' => $o->getAddress (), 'city' => $o->getCity (), 'province' => $o->getstate (), 'postal_code' => $o->getZipCode (), 'country' => 'us', 'phone' => $o->getPhone (), 'source' => LOCATION_LATLON_USER_SUBMITTED ) );
	node_save ( $node );
	location_save_locations ( $node->locations, array ('nid' => $node->nid, 'vid' => $node->vid ) );
	$node->nid = NULL;
}
echo 'done';
?>

The node's nid can be found at $form_state['nid'] after drupal_execute has successfully returned.

I kept running into the problem where no approach would prefill CCK fields with their defined defaults. This is how I ended up getting it to work. Might have worked through drupal_execute but after several hours I couldn't make that work so I went back to node_save and TADA!

   $node = (object)array(
      'uid'=>$uid,
      'name'=>$username,
      'type'=>$type,
      'title'=>$title
   );
   $contenttype = content_types($type);
   foreach ($contenttype['fields'] as $fieldname => $field) {
      if(isset($field['widget']['default_value'])) {
         $node->$fieldname = $field['widget']['default_value'];
      }
   }
   node_save($node);

Thank you,

I'm working on an very VERY similar module to import people data from a legacy database to Drupal in a Research Centre. I just managed to make it work when I found your post, but it helped me to assure i was right. I have not found yet problems with duplicities or missings.

Are you posting your work as a contributed module, or are you keeping it private?

If I got a customizable enough module I will publish it on CVS. But it's still quite specific for my database.

Thank you again for your work and your post.

---
Antonio Jesús Sánchez Padial
Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences - Spanish National Research Council (CCHS- CSIC)
Madrid, Spain

I think your problem may be that you are not initializing $form_state before you use it.
$form_state is fed into the execute by reference so that any changes the rest of the system makes are left cluttering up that array. Some of which may be confusing the process.
The way your code is structured, $form_state is being recycled repeatedly, as if you are pressing 'save' repeatedly on the same page with different results, when you actually want to be submitting many subsequent forms.

Just setting $form_state = array() at the start of the loop (good programming practice also - protects you from PHP lazyness) should have fixed that.

has anyone used this method to alter the form components of other modules?

For example, I am modifying a node of type 'page', I have included a custom field 'blah' and want to set its value, also, the Path module has a form on the page node edit form containing a url alias, and I want to set it.

Has anyone had any luck altering some of the 'sub-form' fields in a node type?

Does doing this require separate calls to drupal_execute (one for each subform)?

THanks to the author, this is VERY useful to me!
st

First off, thank you very much to everyone who contributed to this post with great advice.

Having worked the whole day over this kinds of issues, I may have some tips in case someone is finding that drupal_execute doesn't behave the way it should. What I found (and I know it's not new, and maybe someone else had solved it before, but all I could do is find my own solution) was that certain CCK fields do not get populated by drupal_execute after the first node has been created (that is, the first node comes out OK, but not the following ones). I narrowed the problem down to those fields that need specific validation, such as dates, currency values, and even text fields in the form of select items.

My solution was to isolate those fields and, after running drupal_execute, retrieve the full node objects just created and populate the missing fields, then run node_save on those. It's not too efficient, of course, as the function needs to go through all the nodes twice.

Why didn't I run node_save right away, as advised elsewhere? (I read posts by KarenS where she recommends it over drupal_execute.) I didn't, because drupal_execute makes it a breeze to programmatically enter taxonomy terms and even file fields and image fields, which—as far as I've seen—node_save does not populate correctly (that is, it doesn't call the appropriate functions to upload and manage files). drupal_execute works perfectly even with an experimental module like FileField Sources: http://drupal.org/project/filefield_sources. But those extra tricky fields, only node_save could tame them.

If anyone has run into similar issues and needs code examples, just let me know and I will post them. (I've been coding all day, and right now I can't look at another line of PHP.)

I've made my own CCK node type, and would like to use drupal_execute to populate it. Although my nodes get created, I receive the warning:

warning: mysqli_real_escape_string() expects parameter 2 to be string, array given in /home4/louissim/public_html/lmctv2/includes/database.mysqli.inc on line 323.

The show (my custom node type) seems to be created ok. The warning does not occur when submitting the node form by hand. I've stripped down my code to try to isolate the cause, and the following still throws the warning (and creates a show node):

$form_state = array();
$form_state['values']['title'] = 'Test Title';
$form_state['values']['body'] = 'Body text';
$form_state['values']['name'] = 'admin';
$form_state['values']['op'] = t('Save');
			
$node = array('type' => 'show');

drupal_execute('show_node_form',$form_state, (object)$node);

Does anyone have ideas on how I could pinpoint the issue, or seen this themselves?

Hello wdmartin,

Thanks for this documentation..it was really useful for me.
I have also done something like this, where I have created a form and on submission I am creating a node of content type by submitting some values in the fields of the desired node.
Now everything is working after long trial & error method except this UID thing -

<?php
'uid' => (string) $user->uid
?>

I am pasting the those bunch of lines which I am using in my code -

<?php
function taskform_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
  $node = new stdClass();
  $node->type = 'create_task';
  $node->uid = (string)$user->uid;
  $node->title = $form_state['values']['task'];
  $node->body = $form_state['values']['task'];
  $node->status = 1;
  $node->promote = 0;
  $node->field_assigned_uid[]['uid'] = $user->uid;
  node_object_prepare($node);
	$node = node_submit($node);
	if ($node->validated) {
  		node_save($node);
	}
	else{
		t("Node not created");
	}
}
?>

Can you tell me what can be problem with this ?

Any way thanks,
RajeevK