So, basically, we have an XML feed and we want to use that data to create pages in a SP Page Library.
We created a Console App (Basically an EXE that is run on the SP Server itself).
Our Console App does the following:
- Creates new Pages, and copies the data into them from the XML Source
- Updates existing Pages (as needed, based on a ‘Last Updated’ time-stamp) with newer data
- Deletes pages that no longer exist on the source
- Identifies any IMG reference, locates the source URI, and uploads it to the Image Library
- Rewrites any IMG references to refer, instead, to the ‘local’ copy of that Image it just made
What we end up with is a Library on the department site that is a copy of that department’s news stories on the CAS site.
Since it’s a copy, if the CAS site were to go down, the department site would keep chugging along just fine.
Also, since the data is in a Pages library, we get access to the full array of Web Parts to display our data, and we’re not just stuck with the Data Form Web Part (which, coincidentally, I’m not a big fan of).
The other thing I like about this solution is that there’s nothing limiting me to only using my own SP generated XML data.
Conceivably, I could parse somebody’s ical feed from their Google Calendar and use that to populate an Events Calendar in SP.
Or, if there was an XML feed of Course Data at UD, I could import that nightly into a list in SP.
As long as the data is in some consistent format, we can really import anything.
