Topic: IMPORT / EXPORT BUDDYPRESS DATA

IMPORT / EXPORT BUDDYPRESS DATA

Jasper
Participant

@garyhamptonmcp

8 years ago

Hello,

I have been following this topic since 2014 and wondering if there is an update.

Thanks to all the BuddyPress team for a great platform, but why is there no import / export facility? I am not a coder so don’t understand, is it because it too difficult to achieve?

It would be just perfect if we could export user data, what groups a user is in, and what friendships are in place. And if the icing was really on the cake the profile photos as well.

I’ve had our Buddypress Timebank in place since spring 2014 and have been on the forums ever since looking for a solution. There seems to be some kind of bug in our system I can’t work out. What we really need is a fresh start and an import/export facility.

I have tried copying database tables over from one installation to another with some degree of success, but there are stills bugs.

One problem I had yesterday, I tried deleting one user with ID=1. It’s the 2nd time I’ve tried doing this and the site crashes. Both the Members directory and the Groups page vanish, also out of 26 Groups there are only 3 left after deleting this user.

Also I have a problem with MyCred. Certain things don’t work that work on a fresh install.

It’s a lot of work to start again manually. Create users, put them into the correct groups, and recreate all of their friendships again, and upload all the profile photos.

Two years later I’m at my wits end with this project…

Please, is an import / export facility possible to be built into BuddyPress?

Any thanks again to all the volunteers who have built the platform this far.

Viewing 16 replies - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)

Henry Wright
Moderator

@henrywright

8 years ago

An export import facility would be great to have. Keep in mind this won’t guarantee it will get done, but I suggest you open a feature request on Trac (as always try searching existing tickets first to make sure one doesn’t already exist).

Jasper
Participant

@garyhamptonmcp

8 years ago

@henrywright Thanks for your reply. I looked at Trac but can only find where to file a bug report, not a feature request.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful and realise the BuddyPress team are volunteers doing a great job. But import / export seems fundamental to me and I don’t understand why it is not built in. I’ve seen this sentiment reflected in other people also over the last few years. It would save a lot of people many problems if their websites crashed for sure.

I see there is a BuddyPress Members import by youngtechleads. com and I have used it myself.
I see there are also a few plugins that export some of the data needed. What I can’t find is a complete solution and copying sql database tables over just hasn’t worked for me.

I think this is really needed and will make BuddyPress a more complete product. I really do think this is a missing part.

Henry Wright
Moderator

@henrywright

8 years ago

I looked at Trac but can only find where to file a bug report, not a feature request.

Sorry about that, I should have mentioned there’s no formal way to submit a feature request. If you begin the ticket title “Feature request:” that should be fine 🙂

Jasper
Participant

@garyhamptonmcp

8 years ago

@henrywright Thanks, that’s done now. Surprised no one has posted this already…

Paul Wong-Gibbs
Keymaster

@djpaul

8 years ago

The project has talked about doing this before, though those discussions were several years ago by this point. I can’t remember if we were waiting for a REST API to come along before embarking on this, or whether it’s just been the case that no-one’s wanted to work on such a feature so far or have prioritised it underneath other things, or something else.

Does anyone know of any Open file formats for data export, or would we have to invent one? Does anyone have experience architecting such things?

Jasper
Participant

@garyhamptonmcp

8 years ago

@djpaul Thanks for taking time to think about this. Unfortunately I don’t know much about PHP, or believe me I would be on the case… But if it’s any help I have seen 2 plugins on these forums over the last few years that between them partially do this. I am quite green with this but maybe they could be a good reference? BuddyPress members import is great but only half a plugin. I did ask the developer to add export functionality but he went quiet. It seems to do everything if only we had the export file. The other export plugins we have found don’t deal with groups that have been joined, friendships, activity or paths to profile photos. Groups and friendships would be a good starting place and save a whole heap of time on a fresh install.

Jasper
Participant

@garyhamptonmcp

8 years ago

@manishkrag FYI. See above…
Henry Wright
Moderator

@henrywright

8 years ago
Does anyone know of any Open file formats for data export

Do you mean stuff like?
- CSV
- SQL
- JSON
- YAML
- XML
- HTML
Paul Wong-Gibbs
Keymaster

@djpaul

8 years ago

No, not file formats. 😉

Structured ways of representing data. WordPress’ exports use XML, with a particular format called WXR. Anything that needs to import data from WordPress uses an XML parser and looks for the structured markup defined by the WXR format.

Henry Wright
Moderator

@henrywright

8 years ago

I think the question will be how far away from a REST API are we?

Paul Wong-Gibbs
Keymaster

@djpaul

8 years ago

I would hope by the end of the year

Manish Kumar Agarwal
Participant

@manishkrag

8 years ago

Paid Plugin
youngtechleads.com/buddypress-members-export
youngtechleads.com/buddypress-members-import
Hope these two plugins will help the community with minimum cost.

Jasper
Participant

@garyhamptonmcp

8 years ago

@manishkrag Many thanks 🙂

Jasper
Participant

@garyhamptonmcp

8 years ago

I have already partially tested the above plugin and can testify it has made life very easy exporting and moving all the profile photos over from the old site to the new site. Many thanks to the developer for doing this.

radair2002
Participant

@radair2002

6 years, 3 months ago

@manishkrag: Hi, do your plugins ex-/import xprofilegroups and xprofilefields or just the standard user fields?

Manish Kumar Agarwal
Participant

@manishkrag

6 years, 3 months ago

@Onlineplaner BMI/BME plugin can import/export xprofilegroups and xprofilefields.