Creating Drupal CCK content programmatically/ via API

Question

I am working with a Drupal 6.x system to create exercise / personal training programmes, and am using the CCK with content types of Exercise and Programme, where Programme contains a few header fields and a list of node references to the exercises it consists of. This works great and I can manually create programmes which work fine. I now wish to create a module which can generate these programs automatically based on a number of algorithms I have developed, the process will look like:

1. Load all exercises into array
2. Load users personal info (entered previously)
3. Establish best suited exercises
4. Create new programme content type
5. Save programme

An Exercise has a number of related attributes and although I could do all of the above using SQL directly into the tables it would be quite complex and doesn't feel right. I would like in step 1 to load the exercises as an array of Exercise objects (node_load?), and then create a programme object and save. Is this OO type approach possible or do I have to resort to manipulating the data directly?

Answer 1

The best way to tackle this problem would be to write your own module to do this.

Step 1 you can do node_load($nid) on all the excercies Step 2 you can use user_load($uid) Step 3 you'll need to iterate through the user object and match up to the appropriate excercies. Step 4/5 I'd create a new $node = stdClass(); object and populate the attributes with the correct data then perfrom a node_save($node); this will assign it a $node->id etc.

If your unsure on what attributes are in your training program node, then do a print_r($node); on one you've created already.

Phil

Answer 2

Drupal doesn't provide any "cascading" save mechanism to save a hierarchy of nodes in one swoop. You'll need to build each node in code and call node_save() on it explicitly as described by Phil Carter.

The Node Export module can generate sample code for creating a node (complete with CCK fields) programatically.

Answer 3

There are a ton of modules that try to do the import thing right. Take a look at a comparison of them http://groups.drupal.org/node/21338

If you need strategies or examples of importing stuff into nodes, those are a great resource.

Answer 4

I don't think "creating" these programs is even necessary.

Why not just display a list of exercises that match your requirements and share 'characteristics' with the user.

I'd accomplish this by making the 'characteristics' be taxonomy. Then attached to users either with a profile, or taxonomy flag. Then display a list (perhaps even a view at first) and those with the same characteristic tags within exercises.

This would be dynamic and user specific and note require pre-loading a bunch of programmes.

A thought.