Automated import of articles, files and images #1493

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Nope.

What is the feature?

PHP script to import articles (possible also files, images longer term) from a given input directory. Optionally run a linter beforehand to avoid quadratic blowup stuff.

As part of the setup process, a default article and the associated section / category scaffold are created from provided XML. For users with access to a command line, a PHP script could be used (and scheduled) to automatically add or update 1 or more articles from a specific directory. In the case of new articles, assign the appropriate ID, and for updated articles, use the ID in the XML file. PHP script could use existing config.php for credentials, or perhaps a portable JSON config like the automatic installer.

Considerations:

• makes things more static site generator-esque (could be good or bad)
• opens up a whole angle of automated scheduling
• a whole heap of other stuff I haven't considered

Could also be extended to do the same with files and images: less granular given that a file would need to have an accompanying sidecar XML, but perhaps scope in future to include a URL for curl or wget to process.