Best way to trigger multiple Feeds importers?

Question

I have three importers set up and working fine; all creating nodes from an XML file using HTTP fetcher.

The created nodes reference each other (using Node Reference), so the importers must run in a certain order.

To automate this, I'm not using the periodic import option as it won't keep things in sync. Instead, I created a simple Rules action:

<?php
function my_import_action_import($importer_name, $feeds_node) {
  while (FEEDS_BATCH_COMPLETE != feeds_source($importer_name, $feeds_node)->import());
}
?>

Then I created a rule that runs on cron with three actions (one to trigger each importer).

As far as I can tell, it seems to work. But I get a warning notice that doesn't happen when I run the importers manually:

Notice: Undefined offset: 2 in references_feeds_set_target() (line 203 of /home/mysites/drupal7/sites/default/modules/references/references.feeds.inc).

I also have a feeling that Feeds was meant to use job scheduler for a reason, and not run on cron in this way?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I had almost the exact same need where I had to import data from xml files usinf HTTP fetcher. I had 5 importers and had to run one after the other.

I declared a function that triggered the importers programmatically one after the other.

For triggering each importer this is what I did -

$feeds_source = feeds_source($importer_id);
$feeds_config = $feeds_source->getConfigFor($feeds_source->importer->fetcher);
$feeds_config['source'] = $url;
$feeds_source->setConfigFor($feeds_source->importer->fetcher, $feeds_config);
$feeds_source->save();
$feeds_source->startImport();

where $importer_id is the machine name of the importer; you can find it in the table 'feeds_source' and $url is the url where you have your xml file. feeds_source()

And there's this awesome cron module - Elysia Cron which gives in its own words 'a fine grain control over each task and several ways to add custom cron jobs to your site'.

With Elysia's hook_cronapi() you can set up a cron job which calls your function at your set up intervals.

Though it seems really a long since your question.....I hope this is of some help.