The YAML Content Module: A Handy Tool to Outline the Content to Import!

Consider these 3 real-life scenarios:

1. you need to “populate” a newly developed Drupal website with content
2. you need to migrate content from one Drupal website to its freshly redesigned version
3. you need to quickly “animate” a website wireframe with some demo content for one of your Toronto digital agency's clients

The YAML Content module is:

• a handy tool ensuring a streamlined import/update process
• a flexible way for you to manage the content that you need to migrate / update

… in each one of the 3 above-mentioned use cases!

Basically:

• it helps you outline (mind you don't connect it to the module Outline) it the content to import by leveraging a YAML format
• it streamlines the whole process helping you define a set of content which can be found in multiple content files on your site
• it turns content updating/re-importing into a highly flexible, highly dynamic process thanks to the hierarchical way in which you get to visualize it and scan it through (notice the resemblance with the module Outline, which enables you to organize your entities in a hierarchical structure)

In other words: the YAML Content module turns the entire defining, structuring and dynamic updating of the content to be imported into an ideally streamlined process!

Now let's see why such a module was needed in the first place. What sets it apart from other Drupal tools alike:
 

The Interrelation of Content: Now a Problem Solved

With an entire “ecosystem” of Drupal modules ready to take on the role of importing and migrating content, a valid question might be: “Why the YAML Content module?”

What obstacle does it help you overcome? What added value does it provide?

Now if you've already dealt with content import scenarios, you must have surely “bumped” into the interrelation of content issue, right?

It's precisely this “sore point” that this content utility module comes to “heal”!

Practically you're enabled to define processing callbacks across the content to be imported and thus to easily insert new data/modify the existing one during the import process itself!

And here are some examples of tasks that you get to carry out precisely at the time of import:

• import/reference managed data files
• import image files
• query existing entities

There's more!

Besides “dynamic processing”, you're granted with almost unlimited flexibility in terms of the type of entities that you get to define during this process. It's thanks to your content's YAML format, which closely parallels the entity and field API architecture, enabling you to apply it to almost any entity type and to support multiple field types:

• menu links
• nodes
• media entities
• file entities
• taxonomy terms
• block content

But There's no UI: How Can I Use the YAML Content Module?

It's true: the module doesn't provide a user interface! It's been built with back-end utility in mind.

In other words: you're triggering and managing the entire content importing process exclusively via some simple Drush commands!

Just run this command in Drush:

drush –filter=yaml_content

… and you'll get the whole list of commands available to you for interacting with the YAML Content module.

It will present you both with the commands that you need to use for importing your content files and the ones that you'll need for a “developer usage” of the module (meaning: if you need to delve deeper into the import services).

Leverage This Particular Directory Structure to Find The Content to Import

And this assumed file structure looks likes this (whether we're talking about a module, a profile or a sub-directory):

• /content: all.content.yml files that contain the content data to be imported
• /images: all images referenced
• /data_files: all file assets using a file callback for loading and which are referenced

Wrapping Up

Things will never be the same again whenever you need to import content in a Drupal site!

• enhanced user-friendliness for tracking down the content you wish to import
• more “order” (thanks to the YAML format) in structuring your target content to be imported, which implicitly leads to a more streamlined import process
• much more flexibility in managing your content

… the YAML Content module provides it with all and thus manages to stand out from the crowd of modules tackling the same content import “issue”. Feel free to take it for a spin next time you need to import/migrate content to a Drupal site!