Drupalace's blog

So you're editing a Story node in Drupal, and... Wait, was it a Story? Or was it a Page node? Or is the node you're editing actually a Blog Entry?

When you create a node, Drupal gives you a big-letter reminder of what you're making: "Create Story" (or whatever the node type is) appears at the top of the creation form. Yet when you later edit the node, there's no easy reminder of what the node type. Clues in the path, the visible fields, or elsewhere may give it away to the experienced site builder, but not to a newcomer admin to the site. And to be sure, you won't often care what the node type is when making some small edits, but then again you might find yourself scratching your head as you stare at the edit form for a node someone else made, thinking that you'd like to make this change if it's a Story but that change if it's a Page...

There's a nice and very simple tip at the Josiah Ritchie blog to aid future editors (including yourself) on this small point.

As described in How's that Ubercart review coming along?, my work on a Drupal ecommerce site using Ubercart came to a halt when Node Import refused to import my spreadsheet. I found and fixed the problem: Node Import was choking on a column that held paths for my nodes' images. (It was choking silently and demurely, which didn't help at all; a spittle-flinging "ack.. hack... image paths... hurk... killing me..." would have made my troubleshooting a lot faster.)

It seems Node Import wanted slashes in front of my paths (like this: /images/picture.jpg), whereas the book example I'm following shows paths without (like this: images/picture.jpg). I'll add more on that in the final review, but let me note that I can't say for sure it's an error in the book; perhaps the slash-less paths are correct under some setups, such as a different file system setting. (My sample site is using the Public, not Private, download method. Not that I know that that matters.)

In any case, for anyone having trouble getting Node Import to work, one basic troubleshooting step should be obvious: try importing versions of the spreadsheet with columns removed, one batch after another, until you can track down the column(s) with data responsible for the trouble. (You know, remove half the columns, so you test the remaining half; then reverse things so you test the other half... If one of those two variants causes trouble, then test that with first one half of its columns removed, then the other half... There's a name for this sort of thing, but I'm blanking on it. Computer-y people, anybody know?)

All right, back to the Ubercarting...

I'm working through Packt Publishing's Ubercart 2x book to create a spiffy Drupal e-commerce site. So far, I'm finding the book itself worthwhile; it's been quite a help in installing and setting up Ubercart, and creating some basic products. All fine and good, and I look forward to showing off a sample site and writing up the book review.

What's taking me so long is getting Drupal/Ubercart to work right. First I had a problem with certain Ubercart admin forms making themselves unavailable – a problem which, like an earlier unrelated problem with image paths, mysteriously hiccuped itself into resolved status. (Oh, Drupal, stop toying with me.)

Now it's problems with importing nodes from a spreadsheet. This is a part of the book I could just skip, creating all my sample products one node at a time. But I've been wanting to play with node importing for some time now; I have plans for a future site that'll require mass import of music-related data. Any e-commerce site I build in the future, too, is almost certain to require import of product data, so I definitely want to take this chance to learn the importing ropes.

The import process calls upon the good offices of the Node Import module, a welcome tool which, although used in the Packt book, isn't entirely up to full production snuff in Drupal 6. My first bug upon trying to import product data took the form of an ugly error message:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function uc_product_node_is_product()...

Bleah. One solution, as noted in module issues threads, is to forego the latest release candidate, 6.x-1.0-rc4, and use the newer 6.x-1.x-dev instead. That worked! But then comes the second bug:

Once the spreadsheet file and other assets (such as images) are all ready, Node Import takes you through an eight-screen process to start the import. Click "Start Import" on that last screen, and something magical is supposed to happen with (I'm told) a progress screen and, finally, magically-created nodes. Alas, I'm getting the Drupal equivalent of that Millennium Falcon hyperspace scene, where the engines rev up and... sputter out, keeping the ship right where it is. My site just jumps back to the start of the import process, with no progress bars, nothing imported, no new nodes. I add a little detail in an issues thread where a couple other Drupalers have reported the same trouble.

(ADDITION: The above problem holds true using both a tab-separated format or a comma-separated format, whether I output from Numbers or from Excel. Actually, using comma-separated (CSV) format, it holds true using general Latin encodings – but what Node Import asks for is UTF8 encoding. When I try that, I don't even get as far as the end of the eight screens; after just four or so, I get this lovely error message:

Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in /<my web site path>/sites/all/modules/node_import/node_import.admin.inc on line 371

Sigh.)

So that's where I am today. I expect I'll get past it eventually... maybe even really quickly, if a kind soul reading this can suggest what's going wrong. Anyone?? (Banging on the monitor isn't helping at all.) 

In the meantime, looking ahead through the Packt book, I see all kinds of exciting Ubercart features waiting to be tapped. Sure hope I can get there soon!

EDIT: I think my problem's solved. See end.

I'm working on an Ubercart store using the documentation at Ubercart.org and Packt Publishing's Ubercart 2x book. According to that book and to Ubercart.org documentation, the form at Administer › Store administration › Configuration › Cart settings should have three tabs: Cart settings, Cart panes, and Cart block. However, on the new site I created, I see no tabs at all; there are the various settings expected for the Cart settings tab (General cart settings, Anonymous cart duration, Continue shopping element, and Cart breadcrumb), but there are no actual tabs, and thus no way to reach the settings for Cart panes and Cart block.

Any ideas on why this might be? I'm on Drupal 6.15 and Ubercart 6.x-2.2. I tried enabling all core and optional Ubercart modules, to no avail. The Theme is the default Garland. No funny cacheing- or optimization-related features are enabled. What could cause these tabs to be missing?

(I've asked the question at the Ubercart.org forums and the Drupal.org forums, and am still looking for an answer. Thanks to anyone who can help!)

EDIT: I'm going to sheepishly – if tentatively – retract my question. I've been unable to find any other folks with the same problem, suggesting that it's truly a bizarre quirk of my own setup, and not a Drupal or Ubercart problem per se, with a clean answer floating about out there. In the end, I tried "joggling" things: clearing cached data in admin/settings/performance (even though I have cache disabled); and, disabling and then re-enabling Ubercart modules. Somehow, those actions did the trick: I now get the missing tabs. 

As happens with Drupal problems now and then, it's a welcome but unsatisfying resolution; it's the equivalent of smacking a TV to make the picture come in, without revealing anything about the source of the problem, how to prevent it happening again, and what to do if a future recurrence proves more stubborn. Sigh. In any case, things do look to be working again. 

For anyone running across the same problem and this post in the future: You may be facing a "gremlins" issue and not a clear problem to be reasoned out. Try purging with any and all caches, disabling and re-enabling modules, and just general fiddling with things. Heck, try giving the monitor a few knocks; that just may do it. : /  

Here's a small bit of knowledge from the Drupal.org forums that'll be news to no experienced user, but is very important for newcomer admins or any user given power to delete content on a site:

If you delete a node (Page, Story, anything) on a Drupal site and decide you want it back, is there an undo feature? No. You get one chance to back down when Drupal asks "Are you sure you want to delete [node title]?", but that's it; click 'Delete' again and it's gone, man. There's no Trash Can or Undo option or other means of retrieval. Your only possible recourses are:

1. Restore the node from a database backup. (You should of course have such a thing.)

2. Look for a cached copy of the node on Google or some other web site caching service. You'll have to rebuild the node from scratch and re-input all of its fields, but at least you may be able to recover the node's main body text from the cache. (Who knows; you may even have a cached version of the page within your own browser's cache.)

Fortunately, it's easy to avoid data-wiping accidents. Make sure all users know that there's no easy undo for a deletion. (Alternately, don't give users permission to delete nodes in the first place!) When you do want to take a node off the site, consider hitting that node with a simple unpublish instead of a delete. It'll disappear from sight (and site), but will nicely lie dormant until you should choose to resurrect it.