How to loop through a database table to save every column as a single node?

Question

I have a module, which loads company data from an external db to save this as content.

function example_create_nodes() {
// Get Data from external DATABASE
  db_set_active('db_wirdfit');
  $result = db_query('SELECT * FROM wirdfit.wirdfit_data');
  db_set_active();

 foreach ($result as $row) {
  $node->language = LANGUAGE_NONE;
  $node->type = "page";
  $node->title = $row->post_title;
  node_object_prepare($node);  //Set some default values

 // Try to set your custom field
  $node->field_id[$node->language][0]['value'] = $row->id;
  $node->field_post_content[$node->language][0]['value'] = $row->post_content;
  $node->field_post_author[$node->language][0]['value'] = $row->post_author;

  $node->date = 'complaint_post_date';
  $node->created = strtotime('complaint_post_date');

  $path = 'content/mytest-' . date('YmdHis');
  $node->path = array('alias' => $path);
  print_r($row);
  node_save($node);

  }

That works but saved only one node from the the last row of my table. How can I loop through the table and save every row as a single content page?

Thanks for help

Answer 1

The code shown in the question would cause a warning (Creating default object from empty value) when PHP executes $node->language = LANGUAGE_NONE; since $node isn't first initialized. PHP 8.0 would throw fatal error (Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Attempt to assign property "language" on null).

The code needs to first initialize $node.
After the call to node_save(), when the node object isn't necessary anymore, it should set $node->is_new to TRUE and unset $node->nid. Differently, Drupal would think you are saving the same node.

 $node = (object) array();

 foreach ($result as $row) {
  $node->language = LANGUAGE_NONE;
  $node->type = "page";
  $node->title = $row->post_title;
  node_object_prepare($node);

  $node->field_id[$node->language][0]['value'] = $row->id;
  $node->field_post_content[$node->language][0]['value'] = $row->post_content;
  $node->field_post_author[$node->language][0]['value'] = $row->post_author;

  $path = 'content/mytest-' . date('YmdHis');
  $node->path = array('alias' => $path);
  node_save($node);
  $node->is_new = TRUE;
  unset($node->nid);
}

I didn't set $node->created, which should be a Unix timestamp (and it's already set by node_object_prepare()), nor $node->date, which node_object_prepare() already sets to $node->date = format_date($node->created, 'custom', 'Y-m-d H:i:s O');`. If you need to set those fields, you need to set them to the values Drupal expects (a timestamp and a date string).

Answer 2

This is essentially PHP - you are not initiating a new variable with each iteration of the loop. Start a new $node - otherwise you are writing to it over and over.

foreach ($result as $row) {
  $node = new stdClass();
  $node->type = 'page';
  ...
  $node = node_submit($node);
  node_save($node);
}