Thread

Hi,
I am at a point now where I’ll need to auto load a weblog with content which is held in a current database. The current set up uses exsiting code with the EE template to access the older database and to display the content. It works, but obviously isn’t searchable within the EE system.

It strikes me that there are a couple of ways to move the data across:

1 - Copy/paste - but there is a lot to copy and paste, and time could be better spent on addressing other content issues.

2 - Automate it - use a lump of PHP to do the data move for me. But how to do this? I am guessing that EE does more than just load data when it’s creating a new weblog entry. It’s probably doing some clever housekeeping and other things in the background.

So, is this possible? What needs to be done in this move?

The content is text What are the pitfalls of cranking through an exiting database and autoloading the content into EE? The current content is just text, and will need converting to HTML, which the PHP can do.

EE can import content that’s been saved to the Moveable Type format - so the first idea is to see if you can export the content of your old database to MT, then use EE’s import to bring it in.

Past that, EE is all MySQL—so you can directly query into the database if need be.  It’s not a one-click matter as one weblog post needs to create entries in multiple tables, but it is doable.

How many entries are we talking?  Sometimes the automated way looks cooler on the surface, but by the time you figure it all out someone could have done the copy/paste thing and had time for lunch..😉