Article

Importing Data into Blesta

April 21, 2008 | Posted by Cody


Switching from one application to another can be a painful experience, so we’ve attempted to make it as simple as possible. What we’ve done is develop a custom import library specifically for Blesta, to make writing import scripts fast and easy. To top it off, we decided to release all import scripts as open source so you may learn and expand upon them if you ever feel the need. Why did we go through all this trouble, you might ask? Well, our philosophy has always been that productivity is key to the success of any business and so we’ve taken careful consideration to incorporate that philosophy into every piece of Blesta. The import library is a powerful set of functions that can be used to import data from any file or database format into Blesta. With Blesta, the hard work is already done for you. All you need to do is pass your data to the appropriate import library function and let Blesta handle the rest. There are no smoke and mirrors here. While other applications may require you to pay to import certain data, such as credit cards (why anyone would trust another company with that kind of information is beyond me), we reveal how easily this is done in each of our free open source import scripts. To get started importing your data, visit our download section at http://www.blesta.com/download/. You’ll need your 16-character license key to access the download area, which you may find in your welcome e-mail or in Tools -> Settings of your Blesta installation. If we don’t already offer an import utility for your current system let us know. Keep in mind that while our import scripts are written for specific versions of other applications they may still work (at least partially) on newer, or even older versions of the same software. For those of you looking to develop your own custom import scripts, check back here next week when I’ll discuss in detail how to get up and running with the import library documentation (also coming next week).