Post questions from excel to my site

I guess your final solution is to create a simple module, that only has admin setting page, and in which, you'll be able to run a script that will read the Excel file row by row, and insert the row to the database according to the database schema.
Optionally, you can write the same script in a file external to Drupal, but then, you'll have to make sure that you take care on ALL related data, such as additional columns  that Drupal generates, the revision table etc.

Which Drupal version?

If MySQL is the data base and the Excel spreadsheet contains the information you want to load into the data base, you can save the Excel spreadsheet in csv format, and you can run a PHP script to read the csv file with fgetcsv().  This will give you an array of data elements that can be used in a MySQL query.  Each time your script calls fgetcsv() you will get one line of the csv file, which usually corresponds to one row of the data base table.

Use Feeds http://drupal.org/project/feeds. It is a fantastic module that works in both 6 and 7. If you run into issues mapping some of the fields, look up the modules that work with Feeds, such as Feeds Tamper.

Be sure the data is CSV with LF line endings, UTF-8. You'll get the best results that way.

Cheers,

Mike

Feeds is front end.

There have been some suggestions that are probably better but you seem to really want to do this as if you were typing it in on the website. This should be possible, I have made a first attempt at this. Tested up until the point where a question would be submitted. Before I do that I want to ask you to clarify some things:
- the ckeditor seemed harder to manipulate than the plain text body, would it be ok to use the latter? (I already coded the switch-over)
- does the list you have contain an id or text value for category?
- when a category is selected, a sub-category appears. Can this stay empty?

Here is the code so far, I took out the website url. If you want to test it use stepping through or put in some breakpoints, like I said it's only tested up to the submit code near the end of the while-wend loop.

Option Explicit

Const C_URL = "http://www.**************.com"
Const C_URL1 = C_URL & "/user"
Const C_URL2 = C_URL & "/create/question"

Const C_USER = "EE-Test"
Const C_PASS = "EE-Test"

Dim objIE As InternetExplorer

Sub DoProcess()
    Set objIE = New InternetExplorer
    objIE.Visible = True

    Dim h As HTMLDocument
    Dim f As HTMLFormElement
    Dim fe As HTMLFormElement
    Dim fsb As HTMLInputButtonElement

    ' login
    objIE.navigate C_URL1
    DoWait
    Set h = objIE.document
    Set f = h.forms("user-login")
    If Not f Is Nothing Then
        For Each fe In f.elements
            If fe.Name = "name" Then fe.innerText = C_USER
            If fe.Name = "pass" Then fe.innerText = C_PASS
        Next
        f.submit
        DoWait
        Set f = Nothing
    End If
    Set h = Nothing

    Dim rw As Integer ' row
    rw = 2
    ' now post questions
    While ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 1) <> ""
        Debug.Print "row: " & rw
        objIE.navigate C_URL2
        DoWait
        Set h = objIE.document
        h.getElementById("switch_edit-body").Click
        DoWait
        Set fsb = Nothing
        Set f = h.forms("question-form")(0) ' there are 2 forms with this ID/name (1 hidden), we need the 1st one
        For Each fe In f.elements
            Dim feName As String, feID As String
            feName = ""
            feID = ""
            On Error Resume Next
            feName = fe.Name
            feID = fe.ID
            If Err.Number <> 0 Then Err.Clear
            On Error GoTo 0
            Debug.Print "*Name:" & feName & "*ID:" & feID & "*"
            If feName = "title" Then fe.innerText = ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 1)
            If feID = "edit-taxonomy-3_1" Then
                fe.selectedIndex = CLng(ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 2))
                fe.FireEvent "onchange", fe
                DoWait
            End If
            If feID = "edit-taxonomy-3_2" Then ' subcategory is hidden
                fe.selectedIndex = 1 'CLng(ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 2))
            End If
            If feName = "body" Then fe.innerText = ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 3)
            If feID = "edit-submit" Then Set fsb = fe ' Save button
        Next
        If fsb Is Nothing Then
            Debug.Print "* form submit"
            f.submit
        Else
            Debug.Print "* Save click"
            fsb.Click
        End If
        DoWait
        Set fsb = Nothing
        Set f = Nothing
        Set h = Nothing
        rw = rw + 1
    Wend
    ' done
    objIE.Quit
    Set objIE = Nothing
End Sub

Sub DoWait()
    While objIE.Busy Or objIE.readyState <> READYSTATE_COMPLETE
        DoEvents
    Wend
End Sub

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PS: to use this code you need to add 2 references to your Excel VBA project: "Microsoft HTML Object Library" and "Microsoft Internet Controls".

PPS: to keep it simple for now I assumed you have a category ID in the second column of the Excel sheet.

Ah, I wasn't thinking straight. I used selectedIndex which is not the same as the value of the category. When I look at the source there is a different list. The category selections are dynamically added to the page. Maybe the easiest would be to use a direct translation so Hardware=2, Linux=3 etc. If it's not in the list for some reason use 1 for Anonymous. This could be done either in code or in an Excel lookup. For example:

Function GetCatIndex(sCatName As String)
    Select Case sCatName
        Case "Hardware":
            GetCatIndex = 2
        Case "Linux":
            GetCatIndex = 3
        Case "Apple":
            GetCatIndex = 4
        ' ...
        Case "Windows OS":
            GetCatIndex = 18
        ' unknown -> Anonymous?
        Case Else:
            GetCatIndex = 1
    End Select
End Function

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and then use that on line 61 of the posted code:

fe.selectedIndex = GetCatIndex(ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 2))

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If there are other reasons it could fail it should be possible to use "on error" to determine success or failure and put that in column D. Although you probably mean an error that's reported on the page itself. That might be more difficult, would have to scan the source of the page after submit to see if a popup is being shown?

Does the body text contain html? I'm not sure how it will end up. Maybe just a matter of testing.

Here is a slightly nicer approach, replace lines 60-64 with:

            If feID = "edit-taxonomy-3_1" Then
                Dim fse As HTMLSelectElement, idx As Long
                Set fse = fe
                For idx = 1 To fse.Options.Length - 1
                    Debug.Print "** check option: " & idx & " - " & fse.Options(idx).Text
                    If fse.Options(idx).Text = ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 2) Then
                        fse.selectedIndex = idx
                        Exit For
                    End If
                Next
                ' set default category?
                If fse.selectedIndex = 0 Then fse.selectedIndex = 1
                Set fse = Nothing
                'fe.selectedIndex = GetCatIndex(ActiveSheet.Cells(rw, 2))
                'fe.FireEvent "onchange", fe
                'DoWait
            End If

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Ah, just saw your previous posts. Maybe subcategory is required as well?

If you don't want the browser to close put a breakpoint on the line "objIE.Quit"

sub category is not mandate

ok I did put the code for that back in the previous post but either way shouldn't matter I guess. Probably for testing (like I did at first) using a question that contains too few words is what went wrong earlier?

Sure, is it ok if the site name is in the excel?

Ok here it is.
tsta.xls

How odd. I assume you have seen the questions I posted there? I'm using IE8 and an old Excel (2002), maybe that makes a difference? You could try fiddling with the code like take out the FireEvent.

Anything that you can find out what's happening maybe from setting a Watch in the code or looking at the html source could help.

Obviously it's not happening on my system or those posts would not have gone through either.

I think I can try it out on a configuration similar to yours tomorrow but will not have much time during the day.

Actually one more thing you could try: set IE8 compatibility. After the IE window has opened, activate it and press F12, then change the browser mode (in the menu bar of the Dev Tools). It could change the way the category selection works. If it's your friend's website he may know what's going on?

Looks like the ".FireEvent" is necessary (copies the value to a hidden input) and not working in Excel 2007 (and/or in combination with IE9). Did you test with that line commented out or with the FireEvent active?

Maybe it's possible to fill the hidden field directly, could be much easier than finding out what's wrong with the current code, I'll have another look later on.

I did see that other question when you posted it but frankly didn't really understand what you were after, so I skipped it at the time...

Great!

I had a look but no ideas so far, it's a completely different approach and I can't see a direct way to integrate the login from my code with that way of downloading data from the website.