Quite literally – I’d love to run into Chris II. Willing to bet he’s a bit more stable than the first version, namely, uh… me.

Problem: Importing a list of Users from an existing Databse to Drupal

Possibilities:

1. Node Import Module – I thought this was promising until the installation crashed my system.

2. CSV file import – but the problem was all the not-null fields being null – with 400 records to import, I wasn’t about to auto-fill all of them wtih a bunch of pregenerated text strings – who knows what would happen. And I found using PHPMyAdmin rather strict and unhelpful (which I realize was probably helpful).

3. Good ol’ SQL

Here’s what I did:

a. Export the existing databases.

b. Import them into a new temp database in my MySQL installation, called purgatory.

c. Create a new table in that database with columns corresponding to those which I want to update through SQL in the Drupal database. I discovered that the only feilds you really need are (name,pass,status). Status has to be 1 for the corresopnding login to work. Pass, however, needs MD5 encryption.

d. Insert the values from the old tables into the temp using: <code>INSERT INTO temp (name) SELECT username FROM oldtable.<code>

e. Update all records with pass and status using:<code>UPDATE temp SET pass=MD5(‘temporarypassstring’),status=1</code>

f. Check the temp to make sure it’s good.

g. Port temp into drupal users – go to drupal database and use this:<code>INSERT INTO users (name,pass,status) SELECT name,pass,status FROM pergatory.temp

h. BAM – 400 new users in my drupal installation, all with logins that work and temp passwords.

And Now…

To find a way to set that temporary password to something that the user has already given me, like an email address, or their first name.

I guess the PRO method would be to have a PHP script generate a temp password, update the SQL database and send an email to the user so we were out of the loop….