Walkthrough: Synchronizing data from a text file to Sitecore

Current version: 2.0

This walkthrough tells you how to configure a pipeline batch that uses the file system provider to create and populate Sitecore items from the contents of a text file.

In this walkthrough, you create a file that contains information about different cities. Each row in the file represents a single city. Each city is represented in Sitecore as an item.

The synchronization process reads the cities from the file and creates Sitecore items for each. If a Sitecore item already exists for a city in the file, the Sitecore item is updated with the information from the file.

Note

This walkthrough assumes you have the Sitecore Provider for Data Exchange Framework installed. This provider is available for download on the Sitecore Developer Portal.

The walkthrough shows you how to perform the actions in the following table.

Action	Topics
create a test import file	Create a source file
create a tenant to contain all the DEF items and settings needed	Create a tenant
prepare the Sitecore content database for receiving the imported values	Create a template for target items Add a parent item for target items
create components to read the lines from the source file	Add an endpoint for the source file Add value accessors for the source file
create components to write the lines to the Sitecore content database	Add an endpoint for target items Add value accessors for the target items
create a pipeline that receives a line from the source file, transforms its values, and writes them to the Sitecore content database	Add a pipeline to read the source file Add a pipeline step to read data from a source file Add a pipeline step to iterate the data read from a source file
create a pipeline that reads the source file, and calls the first pipeline for each line	Add a pipeline to sync a single row from the source file Add a pipeline step to resolve the target item Add a pipeline step to apply mappings Add a pipeline step to update the target item
create a pipeline batch that runs the pipelines in sequence	Add a pipeline batch
run the pipeline batch	Test a pipeline batch