To everyone who faces the same dilemma as I did, there are actually a lot of online resources dictating how this issue can be solved. I found the best way to find the solution was actually to search for something like Import WordPress attachments programatically, which churned up a fair amount of solutions.
Thank you to @tobbr for his valuable guidance in pointing me in the correct direction. My final solution involved creating a plugin, and then traversing the old sites (CakePHP) database for old images and their paths, then using those to import the attachments into WordPress.
The important key point to take into consideration here is that I CLONED the old sites images directory into my WordPress uploads directory. The old image paths were as follows:
CAKE_ROOT/app/WebRoot/images/2012/10/2/12345/image_name.jpg
Where 12345 = the ID of the image entry in the database (which would become the ID of the attachment when importing into WordPress. So I moved the ENTIRE images folder above into my WordPress uploads directory, so my WordPress image folder structure looked like follows:
WP_ROOT/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2/12345/image_name.jpg
It is important to note that before you even begin to import attachments programatically, your images MUST live somewhere (anywhere) within your WordPress uploads directory. Also make sure you have the necessary permissions, for the sake of the import I ran a chmod -R 777 command on my uploads folder before starting.
I then wrote the plugin, which was not nearly as complicated as I imagined, so here it is for anyone needing to do a similar task:
<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Image Importer
Plugin URI:
Description:
Author: xxxxx
Version: 1.0
Author URI:
*/
error_reporting(E_ALL);
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'sd_plugin_menu' );
function sd_plugin_menu() {
add_options_page( 'My Plugin Options', 'My Image Importer', 'manage_options', 'sd-image-importer', 'sd_image_importer' );
}
function sd_image_importer() {
if ( !current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) ) {
wp_die( __( 'You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.' ) );
}
echo '<div style="overflow:hidden;padding:20px;margin:20px 0 0 0;border:1px solid #ccc;font-size:14px;color:#666;">';
if($_REQUEST['getfiles'] == 1) {
// Make a MySQL Connection
$con = mysqli_connect("xxx", "xxx", "xxx") or die(mysql_error());
mysqli_select_db($con,"xxxx") or die(mysqli_error($con));
// Retrieve all the data from the images table
$result = mysqli_query($con,"SELECT * FROM cake_attached_images WHERE created > '2012-10-01' AND created < '2012-10-02'") or die(mysql_error($con));
// pre buffer empty array so as not to create one on each iteration of DB
$files = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
$year = date('Y', strtotime($row['created']));
$month = date('m', strtotime($row['created']));
$day = ltrim(date('d', strtotime($row['created'])),0);
$id = $row['id'];
$foreign_key = $row['foreign_key'];
$caption = $row['caption'];
$filename = $row['filename'];
$files[$id] = array(
'id' => $id,
'foreign_key' => $foreign_key,
'path' => "$year/$month/$day/$id/$filename",
);
};
}; // End if getfiles param present in URL
if($_REQUEST['insert'] == 1){
global $wpdb;
foreach($files as $file){
$wp_filetype = wp_check_filetype(basename($wp_upload_dir['baseurl'].'/'.$file['path']), null );
$wp_upload_dir = wp_upload_dir();
$attachment = array(
'guid' => $wp_upload_dir['baseurl'].'/'. $file['path'],
'post_mime_type' => $wp_filetype['type'],
'post_title' => preg_replace('/\.[^.]+$/', '', basename($wp_upload_dir['baseurl'].'/'.$file['path'])),
'post_content' => '',
'post_status' => 'inherit',
'post_parent' => $file['foreign_key']
);
// Insert attachment, newly added attachmnet ID is returned...
$attach_id = wp_insert_attachment( $attachment, $wp_upload_dir['path'].'/'. $file['path'], $file['foreign_key'] );
// The file MUST be included to make use of the wp_generate_attachment_metadata function below
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/image.php');
// Generate metadata from newly added attachment above
$attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $wp_upload_dir['path'].'/'. $file['path'] );
// Updates atttachment metadata for newly added attachmnet based on the generated metadata above
if(wp_update_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $attach_data )){
// Optional, can be sued to set the added attachmnet as the featured image on the post
add_post_meta($file['foreign_key'], '_thumbnail_id', $attach_id, true);
// Simple outout to indicate if attachmnet was added or not, for debugging
echo '<span style="color:green;">Attachment successfully added for post with ID <strong>'.$file['foreign_key'].'</strong>, path of new attachment is at <strong>'.$wp_upload_dir['baseurl'].'/'.$file['path'].'</strong></span><br/>';
}else{
echo '<span style="color:red;">Failed to generate new attachment for post with ID <strong>'.$file['foreign_key'].'</strong></span><br/>';
}
}
} // end if insert param present in URL request
$files = null;
echo '</div>';
}?>
AND HERE IS A BONUS FUNCTION:
I came across this AFTER writing the plugin, however if you only have a few (I had over 100,000 images to import!) there is a VERY handy function in WordPress called media_sideload_image which grabs an image from a remote URL and attaches it to a post of your choice, pretty worth taking a look at. Get more info at the codex: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/media_sideload_image
Some links to WordPress Codex resources that helped me are as follows:
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_insert_attachment -
Inserting attachments programatically
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_update_attachment_metadata - Updating meta data for newly added attachment add_post_meta - If you wish to set the newly added image as a featured image
Other external sites that aided me:
- http://www.zdnet.com/blog/diy-it/programmatically-importing-thousands-of-featured-image-post-thumbnails-into-wordpress/118 - ZDNet
- http://nlb-creations.com/2012/09/26/how-to-programmatically-import-media-files-to-wordpress/ - NB Creations
- Programmatically get images by URL and save in uploads folder - WordPress Answers
- Programatically creating image attachments from local URLs and setting featured image - WordPress answers
I hope this helps someone as it did me.
Simon
