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Import does not merge?

K

kbs666

Well-known member
While messing around with import I imported a project into a realm where I had some topics with the same name assuming the topics would be merged. Instead I wound up with two copies of the topics. I looked at the import advanced settings and it seems to think content should merge with all its talk of overwriting conflicting content.

Was this something specific to this realm or are other people having similar problems?
 
The merge would only apply when re-importing an update export file.
It does not merge imported topics with non-imported topics.
 
The name is not the key identifier for merging.. otherwise, you could not have two Topics with the same name as you can now.

A hidden identifier is used to recognize updates to the same topic by the Import/Export logic.
 
There are countless things in any world that have the same name. Obviously, you can have two people with the same name. But it's also quite reasonable to have different things with the same name. For example, a person, a city, and a ship could easily have the same name. Heck, the city and ship might specifically be named after the person! Realm Works has to handle that smoothly, so relying solely on the name is simply not possible.

Then consider the scenario where content is being published/shared by others. It's quite likely that the same name can be used for two completely different NPCs in two different sets of published content (ModuleA and ModuleB). And you might use the exact same name for an NPC in your own world. So when you import ModuleA into your world, do you want the Fred Smith in there to be automatically merged in with your own Fred Smith? And when you import ModuleB, the Fred Smith from that module is further merged into your own NPC? I'm guessing you would think of that as a problem, right?

Consequently, we have to keep every topic distinct and used an special internal identifier to track which topic is which. It would be folly for us to try and do anything else, since we would sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong. And when we got it wrong, we'd actually screw things up in ways that would make it very hard to unravel (e.g. merging two separate Fred Smiths into your own Fred Smith when you imported modules A and B).

What Realm Works DOES do is track the source of any material you export and import. So let's say you create Fred Smith in one realm, export Fred, and import him into another realm. Then you modify Fred in the original realm, export him, and import him again into the second realm. When you do that, we'll recognize that you've updated Fred and properly update him with the new material in the second realm. So there IS a lot of power available here. But we divine the right behavior based solely on the name. :)

Hope this explanation helps! :)
 
rob said:
What Realm Works DOES do is track the source of any material you export and import. So let's say you create Fred Smith in one realm, export Fred, and import him into another realm. Then you modify Fred in the original realm, export him, and import him again into the second realm. When you do that, we'll recognize that you've updated Fred and properly update him with the new material in the second realm. So there IS a lot of power available here. But we divine the right behavior based solely on the name. :)
Click to expand...
What if you change Fred in the imported-to realm and export him and import him into the original realm?
 
Bidmaron said:
What if you change Fred in the imported-to realm and export him and import him into the original realm?
Click to expand...

You know those Advanced Options within the Import form? This type of stuff is where those options come into play. Basically, you can do a variety of things, but I don't want to answer this question without double-checking details with David to make sure I provide accurate answers.

This is something that I'm also going to be writing up an Designer's Diary article on in the upcoming days. So I'll probably not go into all the gory details here and instead just write up that article.

I've got a couple of initial articles written now, although they need a good editing pass before posting. And I've got another dozen subjects identified for additional articles, of which your question is but one. The first articles should start getting posted by Monday, barring any surprises over the next 36 hours.
 
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