Auto-populate site tree items for SilverStripe site

Question

I am still learning SilverStripe, and right now, I have a list of 50-60 pages I have to create for a site. It was suggested that I find a way to auto-populate the SilverStripe site tree with some code in order to save time (as opposed to manually creating each page one at a time). I have never tried something like this before (with or without a CMS). I know what the parent and child page names are, and I suppose I would need to create a loop to build out the child pages for each parent.

Is this something that is possible in SilverStripe? Would a for loop be the best approach or is there a more efficient way? If I can make creating these pages easier, it would be great for me for this project and future ones, so any advice would be appreciated!

Answer 1

My understanding of this question is that you want to pre-populate the pages and their content programmatically rather than manually entering them in the CMS. There are a few projects that might help you.

1. Populate module (https://github.com/dnadesign/silverstripe-populate)
2. SilverSmith (https://github.com/unclecheese/SilverSmith)

Or you could simply override DataObject::requireDefaultRecords and build the pages out there. I would often use that method for functional or one-off type pages (e.g. ShoppingCart).

Answer 2

There is also a Site Tree Importer from SilverStrip Labs. It's hosted on Github