With the advent of the WebGUI asset system all wobjects and templates, among other things, are now assets. This change could present a problem for developers. What if the new wobject or template we created doesn't really have an obvious place to be attached in the asset tree? Most developers would attach it to the root. Since we don't know what anybody's site looks like that may use our wobject or template, this could clutter up the root very quickly and cause a potential slow down of the asset tree. Because of this issue, the Import Node was created. The import node gives us a place to attach new templates and wobjects we create without them directly being children of the root. As the import node itself is a child of the root all new assets we add in this way will be children of the import node instead. Because the import node is hidden from navigation and marked, system, we shouldn't have to worry about it showing up in different navigations or slowing down the asset tree.

For an example of how to to use the import node, we'll assume we are adding a new template.  We enter the following code:

my $importNode = WebGUI::Asset->getImportNode;
$importNode->addChild((
    className=>"webGUI::Asset::Template",
    template=>$template,
  ....
), $assetId);

We need to make special note of the $assetId variable at the end. WebGUI will generate a default asset id for us when we call addChild(). This second paramater allows us to specify an asset id. This is most important, because when we import our new asset, we probably want to give it the same asset id on all systems. That way if we ever need to upgrade the new asset, we have an easy way of doing it because we know the id.

When specifying and asset id, it is recommended that they don't look like regular WebGUI id's. Make sure it is 22 characters, but we should use something like this:

YourNameTMPL0000000001

Using that format makes the asset id easily recognizable as one that was not generated, and it is unlikely it will conflict with anything else in the system.

We also highly recommend putting all of your inserted assets into a folder of your own creation. Something like this:

my $importNode = WebGUI::Asset->getImportNode($session);
my $folder = $importNode->addChild({    
    className=>"WebGUI::Asset::Wobject::Folder",       
    .....    
    });
my $asset = $folder->addChild({
    .....
    });
my $versionTag = WebGUI::VersionTag->getWorking($session);
$versionTag->commit;