How to import data

How to import data into a Soks wiki

The basic question: How can I import data into Soks? (both pages and attachments)

I have a table worth of information that I would like to load into my Soks wiki. Each row of the table will become a page and each row has a PDF file associated with it.

What would be the process of dumping my tabular data in the wiki? Do I merely need to dump out .textile versions of the pages in the contents directory (properly escaped)? Do I need the YAML revision companions? Do I merely dump the PDF files in the attachments directory (with proper .textile files also placed in contents)?

So far, I have something like, 
projects.each do |p|
 name = CGI.escape("2005 ii Proposal: #{p.organization}: #{p.title}")
 File.open(name+'.textile','w') do |f|
  f.puts "h2. #{p.title}" 
  f.puts
  f.puts "|Author:|#{p.author}|" 
  f.puts "|Organization:|#{p.organization}|" 
  f.puts "|FTE:|#{p.fte}" 
  f.puts "|Beneficiary:|#{p.beneficiary}|" 
  f.puts "|Submission:|Attached #{p.proposal.gsub(/\s/,'+').sub(/\..*?$/,'')}|" 
 end
end

Am I heading in the correct direction?—Bil

Yes. comments:
  1. You don’t need to escape the file-names, Soks should detect they are not escaped and correct them.
  2. You don’t need to create revisions files, Soks will create them automatically.
  3. If a revision file exists, but is out of date, Soks will bring the revision file up to date.
  4. (I think you have realised this, but just in case) To import the PDFs, you need to both put them in the attachment directory and create a page in the content directory whose name starts ‘attached ’ and whose content is /attachment/filenameof.pdf
  5. You can do this while the wiki is running (soks periodically scans the content folder and updates itself with any changes1) but if you are adding a lot of files it is best to stop the wiki while the changes are made. —tamc2

An alternative (only appropriate if you plan to update the wiki from the database frequently) would be to write a helper class that you call from start.rb and that uses the @wiki.revise(pagename, content, author) methods.

A third alternative would be to use DRb (e.g. write require 'drb' DRb.start_service( 'druby://localhost:9001', view) somewhere in your start.rb file) and then write a script (or use irb) to remotely call the @wiki.revise( pagename, content, author) methods.

1 Changes detected by looking at the file’s timestamp, not its content.

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