Any new solutions for bulk upload or import of many questions at once?

Question

Has anyone found a good solution to bulk add questions via upload or import from a CSV, excel, txt or other data file format? I have a list of about 1000 questions I want to pre-populate the site with. Doing this manually would take forever. A plugin, php script, etc... would be most useful.

I'm surprised a bulk question creation tool is not a built in function. Would make it more attractive for developers who want to create large sites on the fly.

If anyone has the programming skills to do this, consider creating a crowd-funding page with needed $ goal to develop this plugin or feature and link to it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi,

I'm working on a PHP script to import Users, Questions, Answers & Comments.

I had  imported Categories & Sub-Categories directly with a CSV file and PhpMyAdmin. It's a first test very simple to do.

I'll publish my scripts for free but to for a plugin, I have to learn all the functions before this, and it's much more work to do and any $ will be welcome ! (€ for me, I'm french )

Regards.

Comments

Hi,
This is great, thanks.
I tried importing questions from CSV file into mysql which was pretty easy. But there are other DB relationships between the question title and other tables. So I gave up.

Looking forward to what you come up with :)
I will be happy to help beta test.
And can help also help with fund-raising for you if it's working.

Thanks!

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I also want do this can you provide a link of your code

Answer 2

I test this day my first scripts to inject users with the Q2A functions.

It's work fine, with little features I have to extend (changing register date, update state, ...).

To make a massive Q import, it is necessary to have a user who has written them. So you have to create user(s) before and rely them to questions.

Regards & good night (23:37 in France)

Comments

If it works reliably as a plugin for Questions2Answer, it may be good idea to sell it as a pro-plugin on a platform like Envato (codecanyon.net), codester.com, etc.) and maybe this bulk-add questions selling point feature for developers will help breath some life into this script. Just needs some creative marketing, which I can assist with.

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It's not a plugin at this time, just a script using Q2A functions qa_* I'm learning about.
I noticed that qa_ function are ready to make plugins, because when errors occurs, qa_ functions a generating some HTML output, and I have to understand this.
I noticed that with a massive (18.000+) user insert, I had some strange values in phpMyAdmin for the IP adresses which are stored in binary format. No problem to display them in Q2A but strange characters in phpMyAdmin... ?

I'll answer you in PM but it's not ready to develop a pro-plugin it's just do-it-yourself at the moment. :o)

I think I'll have users and questions scripts ready for next monday, I'll make a little doc for using it and you and other will can test them but with beta-test databases !

Regards.

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I have an unexpected job to do before the end of next week, I will not be able to work on the subject until then, but I'll let you know.

Regards

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Sounds good. Looking forward to helping Beta test it. Just let me know. Thanks!

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Ready to help test the script. Still there?

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@max : Yes still there but extra-job to do this week and it's not finish... Go back to work.

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Hi again:

Any luck with the bulk import script yet?

Thanks

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You want to import only questions?

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Yes, I only want to import questions. I have about 700 questions in a text file. I can convert it into a CSV also if that works better for importing.

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The only thing you need are categoryid, user ID, tags, question title, question text (ignoring created time, IP etc). If these are available in a proper format, then you can just call qa_post_create function.

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Can you post a link to your script? Thanks

Answer 3

Hi guys. I did my own system to moderate user messages. I can easily do this, but I have to know how q2a database works.

1. when I add a question, the q2a only add a row in questions table?

2. when I add a user, the q2a only add a row in users table?

Thats because q2a works with a lot of logs and statistics and Id like to know how it works before build something. Can someone answer this 2 questions?

Comments

For adding question, do not directly write to qa_posts table but instead use the create post function. Most of these functions you can find in qa_include/app folder which internally will call the required database functions.

Answer 4

I also want do this can you provide a link of plugin code?

Comments

pupi1985 made a plugin to import questions too. Check his profile for the link

Answer 5

Hi,
I have written the script for that , just need to put it in a plugin.

Answer 6

Hello there, I have successfully created a Plugin to Import Question along with its answers from an XML or Json file. It is fully working on my website https://givemeans.net/

It is just in testing phase, if I get no errors, I shall make it available to download and contribute on my website.

Check link: https://givemeans.net/q2a-bulk-import

Comments

Awesome! Looking forward to trying it out. Thanks

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it is fully working on my site and demonstration is given on the given link.
https://givemeans.net/q2a-bulk-import