Bulk metadata update

efvrvo — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:38:43 GMT

I have searched on the forum for this but the results I have found are more concentrated on older versions of Alfresco for bulk file uploading or CMS migration. I use version 3.4d and to bulk upload files is not a problem but to bulk update metadata is a problem. I have seen various topics that use

Re: Bulk metadata update

efvrvo — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:58:24 GMT

Here is how this was solved

First I added this very clever app that you can find here http://code.google.com/p/share-extras/wiki/JavascriptConsole
This app is not required but it gave me a nice admin interface so that I can execute the script. It also gave me the ability to define the "space" variable. But the script can be executed any any way obviously.

Second I found a code to read and parse the CSV file on this site http://www.bennadel.com/blog/1504-Ask-Ben-Parsing-CSV-Strings-With-Javascript-Exec-Regular-Expression-Command.htm
The script is written by Ben Nadel. He gave a very neat script to create a 2x2 matrix (array) as an output for the csv file.

Third I made a few minor adjustment to make the script by Ben Nadel so that it could work for my documents. The complete script that contains my minor input and the section written by Ben Nadel is listed below

var CSVFile = companyhome.childByNamePath("Data Dictionary/MetaData.csv");
var strData = CSVFile.content;
var strDelimiter = ",";

      // Create a regular expression to parse the CSV values.
      var objPattern = new RegExp(
         (
            // Delimiters.
            "(\\" + strDelimiter + "|\\r?\\n|\\r|^)" +
 
            // Quoted fields.
            "(?:\"([^\"]*(?:\"\"[^\"]*)*)\"|" +
 
            // Standard fields.
            "([^\"\\" + strDelimiter + "\\r\\n]*))"
         ),
         "gi"
         );
 
 
      // Create an array to hold our data. Give the array
      // a default empty first row.
      var arrData = [[]];
 
      // Create an array to hold our individual pattern
      // matching groups.
      var arrMatches = null;
 
 
      // Keep looping over the regular expression matches
      // until we can no longer find a match.
      while (arrMatches = objPattern.exec( strData )){
 
         // Get the delimiter that was found.
         var strMatchedDelimiter = arrMatches[ 1 ];
 
         // Check to see if the given delimiter has a length
         // (is not the start of string) and if it matches
         // field delimiter. If id does not, then we know
         // that this delimiter is a row delimiter.
         if (
            strMatchedDelimiter.length &&
            (strMatchedDelimiter != strDelimiter)
            ){
 
            // Since we have reached a new row of data,
            // add an empty row to our data array.
            arrData.push( [] );
 
         }
 
 
         // Now that we have our delimiter out of the way,
         // let's check to see which kind of value we
         // captured (quoted or unquoted).
         if (arrMatches[ 2 ]){
 
            // We found a quoted value. When we capture
            // this value, unescape any double quotes.
            var strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 2 ].replace(
               new RegExp( "\"\"", "g" ),
               "\""
               );
 
         } else {
 
            // We found a non-quoted value.
            var strMatchedValue = arrMatches[ 3 ];
 
         }
 
 
         // Now that we have our value string, let's add
         // it to the data array.
         arrData[ arrData.length - 1 ].push( strMatchedValue );
      } 


print(arrData);

for (var i=0; i<arrData.length; i++)
   {
          var fileName = arrData[i][0]; 
          var targetFile = space.childByNamePath(fileName); 
          if (targetFile != null)
          {            
            targetFile.properties.title = arrData[i][1];
            targetFile.properties["dst:bhuRef"] = arrData[i][2];
            targetFile.properties["dst:clientRef"] = arrData[i][3];
            targetFile.properties["dst:shtVol"] = arrData[i][4];
            targetFile.properties["dst:rev"] = arrData[i][5];        
            targetFile.save();          
          }
        }  ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

The way the script works is as follows:
1) It loads a CSV file that I store under "data dictionary" names "MetaData.csv"

CSVFile = companyhome.childByNamePath("Data Dictionary/MetaData.csv");
var strData = CSVFile.content;

2) Then Ben Nadel's code takes over and parses the CSV file with an output "arrData" that is a 2x2 array
3) The array is then used to find the target files in the "space" variable as defined by the javascript console app is used to find the target files

for (var i=0; i<arrData.length; i++)
   {
          var fileName = arrData[0];
          var targetFile = space.childByNamePath(fileName);

4) The I simply use the array to update the desired metadata. In my case it is custom data I added

if (targetFile != null)
          {
            targetFile.properties.title = arrData[1];
            targetFile.properties["dst:bhuRef"] = arrData[2];
            targetFile.properties["dst:clientRef"] = arrData[3];
            targetFile.properties["dst:shtVol"] = arrData[4];
            targetFile.properties["dst:rev"] = arrData[5];
            targetFile.save();
          }

Re: Bulk metadata update

rachana — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 06:38:00 GMT

Hi efvrvo

Your solution very well for me. Thanks allot.

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