How can I associate many existing files with drupal filefield?

Question

I have many mp3 files stored on my server already from a static website, and we're now moving to drupal. I'm going to create a node for each audio file, but I don't want to have to upload each file again. I'd rather copy the files into the drupal files directory where I want them, and then associate the nodes with the appropriate file.

Any ideas on how to accomplish that?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The file_import module doesn't do exactly what you want (it creates node attachments instead of nodes), but it would be relatively simple to use that module as guidance along with the Drapal API to do what you want.

Answer 2

I am not sure if I am going to propose a different approach or if I am about to tell with different words what you already meant with your original question, but as you want the nodes to be the files, I would rather generate the nodes starting from the files, rather than associating existing nodes with existing files.

In generic terms I would do it programmatically: for each existing files in your import directory I would build the $node object and then invoke node_save($node) to store it in Drupal.

Of course in building the $node object you will need to invoke the API function of the module you are using to manage the files. Here's some sample code I wrote to do a similar task. In this scenario I was attaching a product sheet to a product (a node with additional fields), so...

• field_sheet was the CCK field for the product sheet in the product node
• product was the node type
• $sheet_file was the complete reference (path + filename) to the product sheet file.

So the example:

// Load the CCK field
$field = content_fields('field_sheet', 'product');
// Load the appropriate validators
$validators = array_merge(filefield_widget_upload_validators($field));
// Where do we store the files?
$files_path = filefield_widget_file_path($field);
// Create the file object
$file = field_file_save_file($sheet_file, $validators, $files_path);
// Apply the file to the field, this sets the first file only, could be looped
// if there were more files
$node->field_scheda = array(0 => $file);
// The file has been copied in the appropriate directory, so it can be
// removed from the import directory
unlink($sheet_file);

BTW: if you use a library to read MP3 metadata, you could set $node->title and other attributes in a sensible way.

Hope this helps!