Legacy Documentation
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Channel Sets¶
New in version 3.3.0.
Channel Sets are an easy way for you to save the structure of a Channel and import it elsewhere. The structure of a channel is made up of its Channel Settings, Category Groups, Custom Fields, and Status Group. When you export your Channel Set, you’re provided with a zip file that contains all of the data needed to recreate that same Channel on any other ExpressionEngine installation by using the Channel Set Import page.
When using Relationships, your Channel Set export will export related Channels and continue following the relationships. So if you have a Game Channel that has a Relationship field that has the Team Channel selected, the Team Channel will also be exported. This continues to the Team Channel as well: if that Channel has a Relationship field that has the Player Channel selected, the Player Channel will be exported.
Channel Set Structure¶
Channel Sets are zip files containing the following files:
├── channel_set.json
└── custom_fields
└── <field group name>
├── <custom field name>.<fieldtype>
├── <custom field name>.<fieldtype>
└── ...
"custom_fields"¶
Custom fields are all represented as JSON objects. Each custom field exports its own properties, but label, instructions, and order are always inclued. If after exporting you realize you want to order your fields differently, simply set the order property in the order you want the field to appear in:
{
"label": "Content",
"instructions": "Content for this blog entry.",
"order": 1,
"search": "y",
"ta_rows": 10,
"settings": {
"field_show_smileys": "n",
"field_show_file_selector": "n",
"field_show_formatting_btns": "n"
}
}
Note
All fieldtypes included in the channel set must already be installed in order to import the channel set.
channel_set.json¶
Your channel_set.json file ties everything together. It will contain structural data about channels, status_groups, category_groups, and upload_destinations.
channels¶
{
"channels": [
{
"channel_title": "Blog",
"status_group": "Default",
"field_group": "blog",
"cat_groups": [
"Blog"
]
}
],
}
The array of channels will contain objects that represent each Channel. Each Channel has a channel_title, status_group, field_group, and cat_groups, though they can be empty. In addition, you can supply title_field_label to change the Title Label on the publish page.
status_groups¶
{
"status_groups": [
{
"name": "Default",
"statuses": [
{
"name": "Featured",
"highlight": "66ccff"
}
]
}
],
}
The array of status_groups contains objects that represent the related status group. If you’re using the “Default” status group, we don’t export the “open” or “closed” status, only the additional statuses.
Each object will contain a name for the Status Group and it will contain an array of statuses that have objects defining the status that contain the status’s name and optionally the highlight color.
category_groups¶
{
"category_groups": [
{
"name": "Blog",
"categories": [
"News",
"Personal",
"Photos",
"Videos",
"Music"
]
}
],
}
The array of category_groups contains a name for the category group, and an array of categories representing the group’s categories.
Note
Nested categories are not currently supported.
upload_destinations¶
{
"upload_destinations": [
{
"name": "Blog Images",
}
]
}
In the event that there’s a file field that contains a specified upload destination, you’ll find an upload_destinations object. It contains an object representing upload destinations and those objects contains a name.
Available Channel Sets¶
We created a few sample Channel Sets as examples and starting points. You can find them on GitHub:
- Blog Channel Set: a blog channel with an image, body, and a set of categories
- Portfolio Channel Set: a portfolio channel with support for multiple images and files, along with a brief description and a set of categories
- Event Channel Set: an event channel with location information, contact information, and related events
- Staff Channel Set: a staff channel with email address, phone number, position, and biography
- Game Channel Set: three channels that relate to each other:
- Game is a channel that contains a location, start time and a relationship to select two Teams
- Team is a channel that contains team history, location, a home page, their mascot, and their current Player roster
- Player is a channel that contains a biography, height and weight, position, hometown, and whether they’re currently eligible to play