In this book we're going to import data and content to our site using CSV files. The Feeds module easily allows us the ability to upload a CSV file and import its content into Drupal nodes. So you're going to need a CSV file to use, for the examples in this book. I'm providing a default CSV example file in the code package that comes with the book but you can also use your own CSV. You will want to follow these requirements for creating and saving your CSV file for use in the examples:
Make sure you save your CSV file in UTF-8 encoding.
Make sure you add column headers in your CSV.
If you are adding multiple values to a cell, confirm that you have a consistent separation character. For example use commas to separate values. Otherwise use pipes.
Confirm you can open your CSV file in an application such as Microsoft Excel, and also in a text editor such as TextWrangler.
Confirm that you have named your column header titles using a consistent naming convention; for example, make sure you are using underscores instead of blank spaces in your column header titles. If you are importing a column of data, which contains a Google Map URL for example, name the title of that column as
google_map
. Also it's good practice to confirm that all your column header titles are in lowercase.
We've now prepped our CSV file and we're ready to start building our Drupal content type that will hold this imported content and data.