User functions

The external import extension can call user functions for any field where external data is imported. A sample function is provided in Classes/Transformation/DateTimeTransformation.php. Basically, the function receives three parameters:

Name	Type	Description
$record	array	The complete record being handled. This makes it possible to refer to other fields of the same record during the transformation, if needed.
$index	string	The key of the field to transform. Modifying other fields in the record is not possible since the record is passed by value and not by reference. Only the field corresponding to this key should be transformed and returned.
$params	array	Additional parameters passed to the function. This will be very specific to each function and can even be completely omitted. External import will pass an empty array to the user function if the “params” property is not defined.

The function is expected to return only the value of the transformed field.

Warning

The record received as input into the user function has already gone through renaming the fields. That means the names of the fields are not those of the external data, but those of the TYPO3 CMS fields.

The function may throw the special exception \Cobweb\ExternalImport\Exception\CriticalFailureException. This will cause the “Transform Data” step to abort. More details in the chapter about critical exceptions.

Note

When adding a new user function, you may suddenly be faced with an autoloading error, which is not solved by a flushing of the cache. Indeed TYPO3 CMS builds autoloading information which is not considered to use a cache. So flushing all the cache will not help TYPO3 CMS to detect your new class. You will need to either uninstall and reinstall the extension to which your class belongs or recreate the autoloading information cache using the Install Tool.