Importing CSV containing addresses to CMS

[user225]

I want to upload a CSV containing a set of addresses to the CMS to use with the Google Maps widget. I have the lat and lon for each address and I also have the full address string for each location.

When I upload my CSV to the CMS I get a warning saying that the “Addresses“ (which I upload in a CMS column “Address” are not valid address. Then I click on each warning sign and I presume that Wix geocodes the address strings i imported to get address objects that can be connected to the Google Map widget.

Problem is: I need to import hundreds of records in my CMS so I don’t want to have to click on each error to trigger the geocoding… How can I fix this?

[noahlovell]

I imagine the import is looking for the full address object, likely in this format:

{
  formatted: "500 Terry A Francois Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA",
  location: {
    latitude: 37.7703718,
    longitude: -122.38712479999998,
  },
  streetAddress: {
    name: "Terry A Francois Blvd",
    number: "500",
  },
  city: "SF",
  subdivision: "CA",
  country: "US",
  postalCode: "94158",
}

My recommendation would be something along the lines of:

• Import the lat/long and Address string as individual fields
• Use a data hook, so that when the item is inserted into the collection it constructs the Address into an object and sets the address field value - About Data Hooks | SDK

This way, you can provide the data in the format you have, and then during the import process, the hooks will run and construct it in the expected format.

[user225]

Thanks @noahlovell - but how can I “cast“ a string into an address object? Is there a constructor I need to use? Or a Google Maps geocoding util function available through the SDK?

[user225]

Support just told me this: “The thing here is, the address field in the CMS collection is a field that works internally with proprietary Wix information“

So basically I was advised to manually click on ALL the CMS import errors to cast my addresses into “wix proprietary address“ objects… I have tens of thousands of entries in the collection….

[noahlovell]

Just built our a working solution

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First up, we’ll need to setup our CMS Collection in Wix. At a minimum, we’ll need these fields:

• title (should be Text type)
• latitude (should be Number type)
• longitude (should be Number type)
• address (should be an Address type)

It’ll look something like:

---

Now, we need to setup our data hooks. I recommend following the steps in the article I shared before on how to do start this.

For this, we’ll be specifically using the beforeInsert which will run before each item is inserted into the collection.

Since a valid address object only needs to contain the location (with lat and long values), and a formatted name at a minimum, and we have that info, we can do the following.

I’d recommend taking a backup of any data before doing this incase you need it

export function Locations_beforeInsert(item, context) {
	// Only construct the address if both latitude and longitude values are present in the item
    if (item.latitude && item.longitude) {
		// Construct the minimum viable address object
        item.address = {
            "location": {
                "latitude": item.latitude, // Use the latitude value from the item
                "longitude": item.longitude // Use the longitude value from the item
            },
            "formatted": item.title
        }
    }

	// Return the new item
    return item
}

Note: you might need to check your field keys match the ones I’ve used in the above code

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Now, we need our CSV of data. (I’ll apologise for the names and lat/longs not being accurate, Gemini gave me some demo data for this )

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Go ahead and import the data, mapping the columns of your CSV to the fields in the collection

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Once imported, you now have correctly formatted address field that was constructed from the Title, Latitude and Longitude values, and can connect to Google Maps

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Hope this helps!