New in 9.6: Import/export

This week, GX WebManager 9.6 has been released and one of the additions is new import/export functionality. GX WebManager is already fueled with an import/export tool, so what is the fuzz all about?

In GX WebManager, the import/export functionality provides the means to stage content from a development environment, to a test environment and finally, to a live server.  Import/export is not only useful for the transfer of content between multiple environments, but also between multiple web initiatives on the same or on different environments.

Quick example

Let’s say, you are working on a project in which you have to create a few forms that represent typical user interaction functionality like user registration, user profile and login. First, you create these forms on your local environment and when finished, you want to test these forms on a test environment. Let’s export some of these user interaction forms.

Export

In GX WebManager, you can go to the setup tool ‘/web/setup’ and you find the [content export] tab which allows you to export GX WebManager content. First, you need to create an export file which can be imported on the target environment.

In the first step, you can select different available content types. When looking in the content type pull-down list, you see form models, instances, rules and other form-related concepts. How to be sure that you include all of these concepts? Now, the part that I love the most of GX WebManager’s new export functionality comes along. After having selected the registration and login form model, in step 2 you have the possibility to select related content objects. Just by expanding the form models and selecting the content objects that also need to be included in the export, you are prevented from missing content objects which are definitely needed to be part of the export. Also from the added related content objects, you can view and add related content.

After selecting all content, you can effectively export all content by clicking on the [export content] button. This results in a zip-file that contains an XML file describing all objects, but also images, PDFs and other file formats that are stored on disk.

Import

After a successful content export, you just go to the target environment, and lookup the setup tool again. This time you navigate to the [content import] tab. The first thing to do is to select the right web initiative. Since GX WebManager allows you manage multiple websites in one environment, you can import content for a specific web initiative. After step 1 in the import wizard, you can select the export file in step 2.

The most important step of the import wizard is step 3. GX WebManager initializes the XML file in which all content objects are described, and checks whether these objects already exist. When the object does not exist, GX WebManager automatically creates a new content object. When the object already exists, you get the possibility to overwrite the existing content object or to create a new one. If multiple content objects exist with an identical name, you get an additional pull-down in which you can select the content object to overwrite.

The real improvement in the import wizard is made by the refinement of step 4. In this step, an analysis is given showing all content objects which are going to be imported. Next to that, in this step, potential errors are detected which prevent you to import content objects that might not work as expected. Next to that, you can make a quick print of the analysis by means of clicking on the [Print analysis] button.
As you can see in our example, no errors are shown and we are ready to import all content. In the fifth step, a message is given that the import has been executed successfully and the analysis of step 4 is shown again.

Let’s get back to the editor environment. Voila! All forms and related content have been imported successfully on your test environment.

Summary

Comparing the new import/export to its precedent, we see the following advantages:

• Improved import/export wizard
• Automatically include related content
• ‘Dry run’ to detect potential errors or missing content
• Better usability