CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi,

I'm continuing a conversation on an older thread that had gone stale: http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,16187.msg69161.html

Here's the problem ...

• Import contacts in update mode with an employer column, which includes empty cells (not every contact has an employer that we know of)
• Set the mapping for that column to match the employing Organisation's name
• During the import, all rows with an empty employer cell will be rejected with the message 'Related contact required fields are missing.'

IMHO, the row should not be rejected, but processed without creating an employer.

On the topic quoted above, Kiran seemed to acknowledge the problem, so I haven't verified this on the demo site.

That thread ended with Kiran asking for an issue to be raised. I don't have enough PHP to supply a robust patch, but I can suggest what's needed.

I refer you to the 3.3.5 version code for CRM/Import/Parser/Contact.php.

Lines 791-798 contain the logic for deciding whether to throw this error ...

                    //do we have enough fields to create related contact.
                    $allowToCreate = $this->checkRelatedContactFields( $key, $formatting );
                   
                    if ( !$allowToCreate ) {
                        $errorMessage = ts( 'Related contact required fields are missing.' );
                        array_unshift($values, $errorMessage);
                        return CRM_Import_Parser::NO_MATCH;
                    }

I can't understand checkRelatedContactFields() but I think it needs to be rewritten (it's only used here for this purpose). That function needs to distinguish three cases:

• no Related Contact data was supplied (silently skip the creation of the relationship)
• insufficient Related Contact data (report an error)
• sufficient Related Contact data (attempt to create the relationship)

If case 2 never occurs, then the code can be simplified to not return an error but to skip the creation of the Related Contact relationship.

Ken

Created issue CRM-7540