Add extra item fields to exported WXR file

[kkarpieszuk]

Hello

I am one of WPML developers. WPML is plugin which allows user to make multilingual sites, set language information to posts etc.

Straight to the point: we want to make it available to add to exported posts/pages an information about their language. Language information is stored in our own tables, so we cannot use existing WXR <item> elements like those for taxonomies or custom fields.

It would be perfect if before closing </item> tag would be executed hookable action which will echo those additional elements, coming from plugins such our.

I am attaching proposed patch.

Example of usage:

add_action('wxr_export_item_extra_fields', 'here_wxr_export_item_extra_fields');

function here_wxr_export_item_extra_fields($post) {
	echo "<testitempost id='" . $post->ID . "' />";
}

[kkarpieszuk]

Proposed patch

[kkarpieszuk]

Hello @swissspidy what could we do to have this patch integrated? I am quite new here

[swissspidy]

Thanks for pinging me!

I'm really not familiar with import/export stuff, so I would have to leave the decision for others to make here. Unfortunately there's no maintainer for the export component, so it doesn't get the love it deserves. I hope somebody stands up :)

In my opinion a general wxr_export_item_extra_fields action would be actually quite big as there are no actions currently inside the XML (except for rss2_head). I worry about people not printing valid XML in there, leading to all sorts of troubles.

For example, echo "<testitempost id='" . $post->ID . "' />"; in your example is lacking some escaping of the post ID.

[kkarpieszuk]

I worry about people not printing valid XML in there, leading to all sorts of troubles.

weel, yeah. But on the other hand, we can say the same with the results of any other wordpress filter.

Maybe do you want me to sumplement it with some data validation?

[kkarpieszuk]

@swissspidy could we get back to this?

[swissspidy]

Moving this to Future Release for consideration, but definitely needs feedback from other people than me.

[desrosj]

I'm going to add a suggestion to close as a wontfix.

I tend to agree that allowing plugins and themes to include their own XML in the file could potentially cause all sorts of problems and instability. I'm not very familiar with the internal workings of the Importer plugin either, but I would assume that without alterations to the import process as well, the additional data added to the export file would be worthless (unless there are hooks in the plugin that would allow additional processing of custom data).

I'll leave this open for a few more months to allow for additional feedback, but discussions can always continue on closed tickets as well.