Joomla! Documentation™

Joomla! 

3.x

Tutorial

Developing a component frontend update function

Articles in this Series

1. Introduction
2. Initial version
3. Simple frontend data entry
4. Record item editing page
5. Record list view page
6. Rethink frontend permissions
7. First try at csv export
8. Improved export function
9. Excel xlsx export
10. csv and xlsx import
11. Import with summary screen

23 csv and xlsx import

23.1 Description

If your Joomla application requires updates with a substantial amount of data, it may be more convenient to have the user collect the data offline and upload it in a file than to require the data to be entered interactively. Fortunately, it is quite easy to upload files using html and php facilities, but it does require carefully designed code to avoid upload problems or security issues. See for instance w3schools.com or php.net .

File upload is based on an html form that includes an <input type=”file”> tag. This <input> tag is displayed as a button, which pops up a file selection dialog when clicked. The data from the file will be posted to the server when the form is submitted, much like data that a user has entered by filling in an <input type="text"> text field.

The upload functionality is implemented by means of the following classes:

• first, an upload button is defined that is attached to a form with the <input type=”file”> tag. When this button is clicked, a file selection dialog is displayed and the user can submit the file for upload.The button is defined in 'admin/button/importfile.php' .
• The uploaded file is received as post data by controller 'admin/controllers/helloimport.php' .
• The data is stored in the database by model class 'admin/models/helloimport.php' .

23.2 The changes

23.2.1 Files:

• README.md
• helloworld.xml

Again, these files have been updated to reflect version info.

23.2.2 admin/button/importfile.php

This file defines a button class of type 'importFile' which inserts a form with the <input type=”file”> button in the view presented to the user.

23.2.3 admin/views/helloworlds/view.html.php

This view is updated to include the above button.

23.2.4 admin/controllers/helloimport.php

This controller receives the uploaded data. It has two main entrypoints: importcsv() for processing an uploaded csv file, and importxls() for an uploaded Excel file. The Excel data is read using the PHPexcel package, as described in the export chapters 22 of this tutorial.

23.2.5 admin/models/helloimport.php

The database is updated with this model class. For simplicity of this tutorial, only the fields 'id', 'uid' and 'greeting' are imported.

23.3 Source files for this step

• Download Joomla-Hello-Front-End v1-23
• View Joomla-Hello-Front-End v1-23
• Requires library https://github.com/vdespa/PHPExcel-Joomla-Library

23.4 Testing the features of this step

• Create a csv or Excel file to import. You can use a previously exported file and adapt that, or you can create a new file from scratch.
• Log in either the backend or the frontend as a user with upload permission.
• Upload the file by clicking 'Import csv' for a csv import file, or 'Import xls' for an Excel file.
• Check the import by inspecting the item list overview page, and/or the item edit page.

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Next: Import with summary screen