Yes, this is a limitation on UaaS as we've had significant problems with it in the past. The problem is that people used this feature to work around a problem they experienced. http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/UAAS-400
I'm curious as to what you're trying to achieve with this feature? I can see a legitimate though fairly limited use for it as a "poor-woman's" Copy Document Type feature. However, if you're in the habit of doing that, I would recommend you look into using document type compositions instead.
However, maybe I'm missing another good usecase for this feature, in which case I'm all ears and would love to learn more!
I generally use it to get a small collection of "standard" compositions and DocTypes installed into a new website project quickly.
My aim would be to only do it on my local dev environment once and push to UaaS, not go back-and-forth willy-nilly and cause a mess. :-)
I suppose I will now need to put them into a Package to "import"? Which is certainly do-able, it was just nice to be able to pick-and-choose which ones were getting imported individually.
I also made this query to the UaaS support team and Dennis' response included this:
It's disabled on UaaS because document type imports will not get
picked up by Courier, therefore breaking the deploy process, making it
impossible to deploy structure and content.
But my understanding is that installing a package would create Doctypes in a similar fashion, and I assume that Courier doesn't have a problem picking up those?
I'd just like to be clear about any limitations so I don't cause myself any problems once it comes to deployment.
Ah I wish he would've waited with replying that because indeed, I told him that and then I began to doubt myself and you're 100% correct. :-)
Yes, the recommendation is to put them in a package and then, this is important: only install that package on ONE environment (either your local environment or your dev environment if you like working only online). If you start installing it in multiple environments, this will lead to the same deploy issues we've seen before, which is what we were trying to guard against in the first place!
Luckily, you are well aware of this, just adding that caveat for other people stumbling on this post!
IMHO it seems like less work to select a few doctypes into a package and use that to install all of them at once in a different site.
Yes, doing a "bulk import" via a package would be more efficient in general. It's just in my case I'm not going from site-to-site, but using UDT files that are in a folder on my hard drive :-)
But I can go ahead and create a package.xml file using the info in the UDT files.
I'd say ideally any "development" work (as opposed to "content") really should only flow one direction (local/dev-->staging-->live), so you and I are in complete agreement on that!
I think it should be possible for us to enable doctype import/export while you're working locally and not expose it on the UaaS servers. I'm a bit worried that will lead to confusion but with some documentation it seems like a good compromise, what do you think?
Import/Export Document Types in UaaS site?
I have a new UaaS site running Umbraco v.7.5.3 and am disappointed to see that the "Import Document Type" feature seems to be missing.
This used to be available via the right-click menu on "Document Types", but now the only options I see are "Create" and "Reload":
Is this a known UaaS limitation? I am wondering why it isn't available, and how I might perhaps utilize similar functionality...
Hi Heather!
Yes, this is a limitation on UaaS as we've had significant problems with it in the past. The problem is that people used this feature to work around a problem they experienced. http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/UAAS-400
I'm curious as to what you're trying to achieve with this feature? I can see a legitimate though fairly limited use for it as a "poor-woman's" Copy Document Type feature. However, if you're in the habit of doing that, I would recommend you look into using document type compositions instead.
However, maybe I'm missing another good usecase for this feature, in which case I'm all ears and would love to learn more!
Hi Sebastiaan,
I generally use it to get a small collection of "standard" compositions and DocTypes installed into a new website project quickly.
My aim would be to only do it on my local dev environment once and push to UaaS, not go back-and-forth willy-nilly and cause a mess. :-)
I suppose I will now need to put them into a Package to "import"? Which is certainly do-able, it was just nice to be able to pick-and-choose which ones were getting imported individually.
I also made this query to the UaaS support team and Dennis' response included this:
But my understanding is that installing a package would create Doctypes in a similar fashion, and I assume that Courier doesn't have a problem picking up those?
I'd just like to be clear about any limitations so I don't cause myself any problems once it comes to deployment.
Thanks!
Ah I wish he would've waited with replying that because indeed, I told him that and then I began to doubt myself and you're 100% correct. :-)
Yes, the recommendation is to put them in a package and then, this is important: only install that package on ONE environment (either your local environment or your dev environment if you like working only online). If you start installing it in multiple environments, this will lead to the same deploy issues we've seen before, which is what we were trying to guard against in the first place!
Luckily, you are well aware of this, just adding that caveat for other people stumbling on this post!
IMHO it seems like less work to select a few doctypes into a package and use that to install all of them at once in a different site.
Thanks for the clarification :-)
Yes, doing a "bulk import" via a package would be more efficient in general. It's just in my case I'm not going from site-to-site, but using UDT files that are in a folder on my hard drive :-)
But I can go ahead and create a package.xml file using the info in the UDT files.
I'd say ideally any "development" work (as opposed to "content") really should only flow one direction (local/dev-->staging-->live), so you and I are in complete agreement on that!
Great to understand your full usecase!
I think it should be possible for us to enable doctype import/export while you're working locally and not expose it on the UaaS servers. I'm a bit worried that will lead to confusion but with some documentation it seems like a good compromise, what do you think?
Sure, that would certainly work :-)
Though if you think people will be confused, I'd hate to have you work on something that only I would use...
We need Polling functionality in this forum - to see if anyone else misses the Import functionality other than myself. ;-)
Thanks, Seb!
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