UI for mass editing content items?

Development User Interface
1

I have a client who, many years ago, asked for a way to "mass edit" content items, e.g. change the value of one field to the same value that she could specify. We kind of hacked it via some Script (Python) and form controllers (yeah!) to let her specify the field she wanted to mass-change and then based on the field type a widget that let her specify the actual value... but that was then and this is now...

Is there a kind of "spreadsheet-like" way of displaying one or more (probably quite a bit more) content items (of the same type), and enabling inline editing on all those items' fields so she could paste a single value in repeatedly?

I'm also picturing a hack that uses a datagrid field that would be loaded with the values of all the specified items to be edited (one datagrid row per content item to be edited), then, on save, re-mapping the grid field values back to the actual content items and their values.

Users understand spreadsheet UI.

2

We use DataTables.net and it's editor component for similar purposes. I supports editing multiple rows in one edit.

-aj

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3

This was one of the usecases for plone.importexport and the GSOC work last year. You can export part of a sites metadata, do some changes using spreadsheets and then reupload it and it will match via path or UID or something else. Maybe not as smooth as a UI but probably more powerful given how many can do lots with spreadsheets.
It would also download content as .html etc, allowing for other find and replace tools.

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