Import&Export Functionality

Overview

The Treenode Framework includes built-in export and import features for easier data migration. Supported Formats: csv, json, xlsx, yaml and tsv. The system supports importing and exporting data for any models, allowing users to efficiently manage and update data while preserving its structure and relationships.

Data Processing Logic

When importing data into the system, two key fields must be present:

  • id – the unique identifier of the record.
  • parent – the identifier of the parent node.

It is also desirable to have a priority field in the import file, which specifies the ordinal number of the node among the descendants of its parent. It is recommended to explicitly assign a priority value to each node during import.

If no priority is provided, the system will automatically assign it based on the sorting_field setting. If sorting_field is set to priority, the final ordering of nodes may not be strictly predictable and will generally follow the order of nodes as they appear in the import file.

These fields ensure the correct construction of the hierarchical data structure.

Important

Starting from Django 5.0, it is no longer allowed to create model instances with a manually specified value for an id field of type AutoField.
As a result, during import operations:

  • If the specified id exists in the database, the record will be updated.
  • If the specified id does not exist, a new record will be created, but it will be assigned a different (auto-generated) id.

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This import mechanism is designed to allow users to:

  • Export data, edit it (e.g., in a CSV, Excel, or JSON file).
  • Upload the modified file without disrupting the model structure.
  • Update only the changed data, keeping relationships with other models intact (e.g., without altering primary and foreign key values).

This approach provides flexible data management, enabling users to safely apply modifications without manually updating each record in the system.

Important

Exporting objects with M2M fields may lead to serialization issues. Some formats (e.g., CSV) do not natively support many-to-many relationships. If you encounter errors, consider exporting data in json or yaml format, which better handle nested structures.