Fixing authors when importing a split WXR file for WordPress

If you have a large WordPress Extended RSS import file, WordPress suggests that you split the file in order to create multiple smaller files.  If you do this, then each file will have the same authors.  If you import the second file, third, fourth, etc… then those authors will be seen as duplicates and dropped (and all imported posts will be credited to ‘admin’) unless you go through each author and select them in the “or assign this post to existing author” combo boxes.   These combo boxes become available after you select a file and press “Import.”

If you are importing multiple files because a single one is too big, there is a chance you could have way too many authors to go through each one and do this.  This post describes a hack method of populating all of these combo boxes using jQuery and the browsers development tools.

I had to import 6 WXR files that i created, each one around 80Megs, and a total of almost 500 authors.

1) Get jQueryify here and add the bookmarklet per the instructions.

2) When you get to the “assign authors” page, right-click on the browser page and select “Inspect Element” (Chrome), or “Inspect with Firebug” in Firefox (install firebug if you haven’t already). In IE press F12 to start the Dev Tools.

3) Press the jQuerify bookmarklet button that you installed from step 1. This will turn on jQuery for the page.

4) Go to the console tab, enable the console if you need to, paste this code in and press RUN:
jQuery.noConflict(); //Disable jQuery $ just incase.

jQuery('#authors li').each(function() {
// Get the author login text
var username = jQuery(this).find('strong').html();
var author_login = jQuery.trim((username.split('('))[0]);

//Figure out which option this author is in the drop down.
var selectOptionval = -1;
jQuery(this).find('select option').each(function(){
if (jQuery(this).html() === author_login) {
selectOptionval = jQuery(this).val();
return false;//quit .each() early.
}
});

// Set the combo box to this author's option key.
jQuery(this).find('select').val(selectOptionval);
// For test...
//console.log(author_login + ": " + selectOptionval);
});