import CSV data into a wiki

This code is in our Git repository here. Note: If there is no information in this page about this code and it's a MediaWiki extension, there may be something at mediawiki.org.

csv2wiki is a way to import data from a CSV file into a MediaWiki. The program is run from the shell and requires one parameter which is the filename of a configuration file describing the parameters for the job. It depends on a Perl module called MediaWiki.pm existing in the same location.

./csv2wiki.pl /home/myJob.conf

Here is an example configuration file:

wiki     = "http://foo.bar/wiki/index.php"
user     = "Foo"
pass     = "Bar"
csv      = "/home/foo/projects/bar.csv"
title    = "$1 $2 $3"
template = Customer

Each line of the input file will be imported into an article in the wiki, and the first line of the input file specifies the field names, for example:

Title, Firstname, Surname
Mr, Bob, McFoo
Miss, Mary, Barson

In this example the first row of data will be imported into an article called "Mr Bob McFoo" with the following content:

{{Customer
 | Title = Mr
 | Firstname = Bob
 | Surname = McFoo
}}

If the page already existed, then the new template would be inserted at the top of the page (or the bottom if "append" is set). Or if the template already exists in the page, then it's values will be updated.

Note that pages that already have templates on them must only use a single value on each line in their syntax.

Configuration options

Here is a description of the possible parameters in the job file and their meaning:

Name	Meaning	Default value
csv	The source file to import relative to the location of the script	-
wiki	the full long-form URL of the wiki including index.php	-
user	Username of a user on the wiki with permission to create the necessary articles	-
pass	The users password	-
separator	Also just "sep" is allowed, specifies the separator character used in the CSV file	comma
title	The format of the title using $n to specify the column numbers, default is $1 which means to use just the first columns as the title	$1
template	The template that the parameters should be wrapped by in the created wiki articles	Record
append	Set this to 1 to place the template at the end of the text if the template doesn't already exist in the article	0
include	A comma-separated list of the columns that should be included from the CSV, by default all columns are used	not set