Workflow to control mass file imports

citizen

Has anyone ever written an "Import" workflow to supplant the standard "Import" option of the "File" menu? If so, what were your greatest challenges?

I'm faced with a situation where many thousands of files need to be imported into TeamSite from many different sources and I have little confidence that my users can be trained or trusted to do so "correctly" unless a lot of control is placed over the process from end to end. Instead of writing lots of code to "undo" bad imports (i.e., overwriting previously imported files that have been correctly tagged with good metadata and included in a "content catalog" database) I think it would be more worthwhile to write code to assure that content is imported correctly -- or not at all.

The way I see this working:
* User starts an "Import" workflow
* User specifies a source directory on local drive
* User specifies a destination branch from a dropdown list where OS group membership determines allowable branches
* After user clicks "GO" a temporary folder/workarea of a Transfer branch is created to accept the "raw" files being imported
* Files are uploaded to this temp area using.... WHAT? There is no "iwimport" CLT. Can Launchpad be scripted? Do I need to acquire a file upload utility?
* After all files are uploaded, each file is tagged with metadata using MetaTagger, looked up in a Content Catalog DB to check if it's a duplicate, then copied to correct branch/directory location based on storage-related metadata or shunted off to error handling/recovery routine if tagging or duplicate-checking fails. Files successfully completing the obstacle course would then be assigned a Content Item ID and included in the Content Catalog DB.

Could anyone comment and/or suggest the best way to do the physical import of files via a script?

THANKS IN ADVANCE for any/all help!
-Gene

iwovGraduate

If you are using a cgitask to prompt the user for directory, etc., that cgi script can import the file. Using Perl/CGI, nothing specific to TS.