Importing/exporting glossaries

Importing a glossary

There are two ways to import glossaries

1. Restoring the glossaries from a moodle course backup file containing the glossary (untested)

2. Importing a specially formatted XML file in glossary format.

Some import issues

You can only import the XML file from within a glossary that already exists but you can import to a new glossary.

In experimenting with import I have found that the import will fail often. Some reasons appear to be:-

If there are mistakes in the XML file such as the <entries> tag being missing or the <info> tag being in the wrong place.

If there are top bit set characters in the text of the entities like concepts, definitions or keywords.

If there are tabs or spaces between entries.

In most cases the import is halted if any of these errors occur.

Duplicates in the entries which clash with entries already when merging a glossary is usually not a problem.

Warnings like

Warning: exec() has been disabled for security reasons in /moodle/lib/uploadlib.php on line 603

may not be the problem when importing but may distract one from dealing with problems with the format of the XML file.

The glossary module may eventually be replaced by the database module.

Exporting a glossary

There are two ways to export glossaries

1. Backing up glossaries only via a moodle course backup file (untested)

2. Exporting a specially formatted XML file in glossary format.

Some export Issues

You can only export the XML file from within a glossary.