How can I append a structure entry and set its order?

Question

I'd like to attach children to a specific Structure entry in a specific order...

• Entry A
• Entry B
  • Imported Entry 2
  • Imported Entry 1
  • Imported Entry 3
• Entry C

I've got a $records array to turn into imported entries:

array(
    'name'      => 'Whatever',
    'updated_at' => '2014-02-27T04:14:29Z',
    'position'   => 1, // int representing the sort order
    [...]
)

As I'm looping through my array to create new Craft Structure Entries, I need to be able to define the parent (Entry B), I'm just not sure how. I've figured out how to attach new children to Entry B, I just don't know how to programmatically set their order. My imagination writes code that looks like this:

$parentCriteria = craft()->elements->getCriteria(ElementType::Entry);

$parentCriteria->search  = 'slug:entry-b';
$parentCriteria->section = 'sectionName';
$parentCriteria->type    = 'sectionType';

$entries = $parentCriteria->find();
$parent = $entries[0];

foreach ($records as $row)
{
    $entry = new EntryModel();

    $entry->sectionId = 4;
    $entry->typeId    = 4;
    $entry->parentId  = $parent->id;
    $entry->authorId  = 1;
    $entry->postDate  = $row->updated_at;
    $entry->title     = $row->name;
    $entry->sortOrder = $row->position; // ← quite impossible!

    $success = craft()->entries->saveEntry($entry);
}

It's $entry->sortOrder that's completely made up—how do you attach an entry to a specific parent in a specific order?

Answer 1

If you're adding them all as new entries anyway, why not just sort the records before you create the entries?

usort($records, array($this, 'sortCategoriesByPosition'));

Add that before your foreach loop, then...

private function sortCategoriesByPosition($a, $b)
{
    if ($a->position == $b->position)
        return 0; 

    return ($a->position < $b->position) ? -1 : 1;
}

Stop trying to make things harder than they should be.