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Autoblog: Imported Images missing the description

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First of all, Autoblog is amazing – it does almost exactly what we’ve been wanting for a long time!

We are testing two addons: “Featured Image Import”, “Image Import.”

I want images imported to the media library to have the caption from the source image with them (in the media library, not just in the post, so we can see it if we use the image again in the future).

The source image’s caption is added to the “description” field in the media library if I only have “Image Import” enabled. However, when I also enable “Featured Image Import,” the description is no longer in the media library.

I have granted admin access to support.

Example of an image imported WITHOUT “Featured Image Import” enabled:

http://ktootest03.wpengine.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=331

Example of an image imported WITH “Featured Image Import enabled:

http://ktootest03.wpengine.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=333

As you can see, the “Description” field is missing.

Feel free to use admin access to delete imported posts and media and run additional test imports. This is a development site.

Thank you,

David

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 21:10:12
  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello David,

    I hope you’re well today and thank you for your question!

    I’ve accessed your site in order to check Autoblog configuration. While I didn’t made any changes to your site yet, I did run some tests on my own sandbox using your feed.

    I tried importing posts from that feed with only a “Featured image import” add-on enabled, only the “Image Import” add-on enabled and with both of them active at the same time. In each case description was added to the image on my site.

    That didn’t work for each and every image though, regardless of the add-on settings so I suppose that is the case. For example, for the “State corporation working…” post no description was added in any of three tests while for the “Fracking in A….” post description was added in every case.

    Trying to understand that, I found out that for some items in a feed – like the “State corporation…” – the “alt” attribute of “img” element in the contains HTML entities. The description is taken out of that attribute value and the difference seems to be that while for the properly imported descriptions the img tag code in the feed looks similar to this

    <img src="image_url" alt="Some image description">

    for these “failed” ones that tag looks like this

    <img src="image_url" alt="Some image description & some more description">

    I’m not 100% sure about that yet but it seems like HTML entities may be breaking this. Could you please help me a bit and review your source posts to see whether you should confirm or deny that all “failed” image include this one or similar special characters encoded?

    That would help a lot.

    Best regards,

    Adam

  • david
    • New Recruit

    Wonderful – thank you for the quick reply and great troubleshooting!

    Honestly, if it’s pulling from ALT tag and not the caption, then the plugin won’t really do what we want anyway. It is very important for us to have the source image’s caption in our media library. Is there any way to do this using Autoblog?

    Thank you,

    David

  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello David!

    I took another look at your feed’s source and it looks like there are tags included that identify the caption text. I’m not sure though if/how could we process these so let me ask the developer about that :slight_smile:

    I can’t promise anything at that point but I believe he’ll be able to shed some light on this. Please note though that developer’s response time is usually much longer than ours here on support forum so keep an eye on this thread for further information and I’ll update it as soon as I get my answer.

    Best regards,

    Adam

  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello David!

    I just got a word from the lead developer and it seems that this cannot be easily changed. The plugin is using a SimplePie library (it’s a feed handling library that’s built-in into WP core) and for achieving what you wish there would have to be custom code added that would parse HTML content of item feed that’s been processed by SimplePie.

    This would require either serious changes in plugin’s code or a custom developed “add-on” plugin that would alter Autoblog-produced output before it’s being added to WP database. Such development would be outside the scope of this support forum so you may want to post the question on our “Jobs & Pros” job board (please note: no WPMU DEV staff involved!) here:

    https://wpmudev.com/wordpress-development/

    I have however additionally moved this post to our “Features and Feedback” forum so other members of our community could vote for it and if the idea of a “HTML/source parsing add-on module” would gather more support, our developers would hopefully put it on a future feature list.

    Best regards,

    Adam