Pulling Information from External CSV/Documents

Hi there,

I hope this isn’t too much of a newbie question, but I am wondering what my options are in terms of pulling information from external files.

I need to create some CSV files that contain information such as birthdays, event dates etc. I also need to create some documents that would have a paragraph or so of information pertaining to the company and such. The issue is, I may not always be the person available to update it.

Is it possible to set things up so that files are being pulled from a local system/server? So for instance, if there is a CSV with birthdays listed in it, a co-worker could essentially just update that file with a few more, click save and be finished the job? Rather than having to fire up the CMS and re-upload/overwrite?

Thanks in advance.

You could edit datasets directly in CMS ie add few records etc

If that changes need to be made in .csv file then you’d need to either upload it via web ui or API call (1.8)

Would the web UI essentially just be the CMS currently installed? The API instructions seem a bit daunting. Not sure where to even start?

If I were to setup a WAMP server and pull the information from a locally hosted page, would that be an easier workaround? Am I able to display just specific portions of a webpage?

Yes.

This could be a good place to start - API Introduction with Postman
(1.8 series only!)[quote=“Kris27, post:3, topic:9603”]
Am I able to display just specific portions of a webpage?
[/quote]

Technically yes, you’d select the ‘Manual Position’ Option and then adjust offset / size to show the part of the page you want.

Awesome, thanks Peter!

So what I’m thinking now is this:

For birthdays and events, things that have dates etc. I will invest time into learning how to pull external CSV files.

For the main section posts, so say a section that has a headline, 2 paragraphs and an image, I would create a wordpress site on the same system as the Xibo CMS that would load via localhost and display a portion that would cycle through posts via some sort of javascript slider. Essentially constantly displaying the same region but allowing the webpage to handle the cycling of content (I’m more comfortable with web applications that xibo unfortunately). This would also prevent heavy data transferring as the site is hosted on the same computer as xibo.

Does that make sense? Does that seem like a logical way to approach the problem?

Either that or perhaps rss media feed?

Yes, overall that sounds promising

Good idea! Assuming I can still format my RSS fonts etc. inside xibo? I could use a locally hosted RSS feed to import the text and image information, the same way the CSV would hold the event information. Is there anything I should be aware of before taking this approach?

Good call!

The rss feed can be formatted just as text in text editor (you will be using Ticker module to display them)

images in the feed, can be controlled via CSS (also in Ticker just below text field)
with for example:
.image img { width:80%;}

Once you will have your feed, it could be good to validate it here https://validator.w3.org/feed/
to make sure everything is fine.