Improve warning when content type is same for importer attached to and node processor.

[izmeez]

When creating or editing a feeds nodes importer, under Basic settings: Attach to content type is usually "Use standalone form [none] and under Node processor settings a content type bundle is selected. If a content type is selected under the Basic settings: Attach to content type the following warning is seen:

The importer is attached to the same content type as the content type selected on the node processor. Unless you have a very advanced use case, these two should never be the same. Enable the Feeds News module for an example of how the "Attach to content type" setting can be used.

This message is not very clear and there does not appear to be a Feeds News module example to examine. Maybe this message is a hangover from Drupal 7 and needs to be improved.

Maybe it would be better if it is something like:

The importer is attached to the same content type as the content type selected on the node processor. Generally, the Basic settings: Attach to content type should be set to "Use standalone form". Unless you have a very advanced use case, these two should never be the same.

I'm not sure if there is any documentation for very advanced use cases available anywhere.

[MegaChriz]

I'm not sure how different the Backdrop version of Feeds is from the D7 version, but I think that the error message saying that you should use the standalone form unless you have a very advanced use case is wrong. Typically you want to attach an importer to a content type in one or more of these cases:

• You have multiple sources of the same type that you want to import;
• You want an editor to be able to import their content themselves.

It could be that this use case is less common, but this is not what is meant by "very advanced use case". Typically you attach an importer to a content type if your goal is to import multiple RSS feeds and all that content should be of the same content type.

By attaching an importer to a content type, you need to create a node of a certain type. Let's say you create a content type called "Feed node" and you use this content type to attach the importer to. You also create a content type called "Article", the type of content that you want to import.
On a feed node you then set the source that you want to import. And the result is a list of article nodes. You can see the feed node as "factory" or "container": its purpose is to produce one or more article nodes. And the article nodes are the content that you want your site visitors to see.

But if you only have the content type "Feed node" and you attach the importer to that content type, but you also configure that the importer should create feed nodes, you now have a factory that produces factories. That could be an use case, but I think that is a very advanced one and highly unlikely to be the user's intent.

In the D7 version of Feeds, new users often made the mistake to configure the Feeds importer like that and they got confused by the results: "Why do all my articles ask to upload a file to import content?" So that's why I added the warning message that you now see. And yes, for the D7 version of Feeds there is a module included called "Feeds News", it is a feature module to demonstrate a certain use case of Feeds where attaching an importer to a content type makes sense: importing news feeds from more than one source.

[izmeez]

@MegaChriz Thank you for the detailed response, I still have to digest it further. I am new to using feeds and have only tried it with CSV file import so far. Truly appreciate your comment.

[irinaz]

@MegaChriz , thanks a lot for adding the explanation. I very often use special content type for importer, and so far it works great. @izmeez , do you have more questions here or we can close this issue?

[izmeez]

I need to review this in more detail.