Export/Import CSV either duplicates or deletes unpublished meetings

[AATokyo]

The Meetings->Import & Export screen allows one to import/export CSV. Consider the case where we make no changes, we just export the meeting list as CSV and re-import it. The Import CSV menu allows for three options:

When importing...

1. don't delete anything
2. delete only the meetings, locations, and groups for the regions present in this CSV
3. delete all meetings, locations, groups, districts, and regions

Option 1 has the negative consequence of duplicating all published meetings. Option 3 has the negative consequence of deleting all unpublished meetings (marked as draft or private). Option 2 both duplicates and deletes. This feels like unintended behavior to me. I thought I would post it in Q&A before opening an Issue as I'm not 100% sure this is in fact unintended.

I think it would be better if either:
a) "export CSV" exported all meetings including their Status (Published, Pending Review, or Draft) and Visibility (Public, Password protected, or Private).
b) "import CSV" with delete enabled would leave draft/private meetings alone.

[kiyote33]

Hi @AATokyo,

Thanks for your feedback on the features found in our import/export page. While the import CSV options have been as is for pretty much the last decade, we have tried to keep the option descriptions succinct without becoming too verbose. Let me expand on it a little to highlight the intention behind each option:

1. Import or append only new meetings to the existing 12 Step Meeting List without replacing or removing any existing meetings.
2. Replace only those meetings in the 12 Step Meeting List which are found in the imported CSV file.
3. Replace everything in the 12 Step Meeting List with the contents of what is found in the CSV file.

Your (a) suggestion would most likely require expanding the 12 Step Meeting List schema to handle the new attributes. Doable, but we will need to discuss the cost/benefits amongst the maintenance team before committing to it.

I think the (b) suggestion might be accomplished using Option 2 after doing an export and reimporting the same file after making any needed edits. Exports don't include draft meetings so they don't get over-written on import.

We will discuss at our next by-weekly meeting. Thanks again for the feedback.

[joshreisner]

hi @AATokyo thanks for the suggestion

between those two options would you have a preference?

i typically think of CSV import / export as being a rare occurrence. wondering if you could tell us more about your use-case? are you trying to edit meetings in bulk in a spreadsheet?

[AATokyo]

First of all, thank you both for your service! The 12-step-meeting-list is really great, on the whole.

Let me explain my use case a bit more. We (the intergroup for the English-speaking AA community in Japan) have been getting a non-trivial volume of emails asking if our meetings are in English. We added a banner to our site saying "all meetings are in English" but kept getting these emails from visitors and prospective members. We realized that only some of our meetings had the explicit "English" tag (in the "Languages" field). So I set out to ensure every one of our meetings was tagged with "English", in an effort to reduce the burden on the small group of volunteers answering emails. In my mind, I had three options: manually click through every single meeting, gain SSH access and hack the database, or use the CSV import/export feature.

I decided to test the CSV import/export feature. I thought a safe first start would be to try this in "round-trip" mode, just exporting to CSV and immediately re-importing it with no changes. This would act as a backup for me, as well. I first tried import option 1 "don't delete anything": this created duplicates for all the meetings. I then tried option 3 "delete all meetings, locations, groups, districts, and regions": this looked fine on the public-facing website. Unfortunately, I saw that in the wordpress "Meetings" screen, all Unpublished or Draft meetings were gone. I quickly realized that these meetings had never been in the exported CSV to begin with, so the entire set of ~50 meetings that were hidden (for example, because a meeting is on hiatus) had been permanently lost. This was disappointing.

I briefly tried option 2 "delete only the meetings, locations, and groups for the regions present in this CSV" but since our regions are a bit of a mess (mix between tokyo/online/no region/misc regions) this was not helpful at all. Note that the behavior I observed here was different from what @kiyote33 wrote. His explanation: "Replace only those meetings in the 12 Step Meeting List which are found in the imported CSV file." would not do any region-based filtering and would have been much more useful to me.

I realized the damage was done and that option 3 was the only remaining useful option for my case, so I wrote a small python program to edit the CSV, added the "English" tag to meetings which didn't already have it, and re-exported with option 3. This worked well.

In the end, this is not a disaster---I'll just have to recreate from scratch any listings for meetings that wish to be reinstated in the future.

My top suggestion would be to add the "Status" and "Visibility" fields to the CSV schema. This would not only stop future users from encountering my exact issue, but would also allow the "Export CSV" option to be used as a complete backup, including meetings that are not currently set to be Published/Public.