WXR admin import doesn’t preserve post_date/pubDate and appears to bypass wxr.ts

[bwlng]

I’ve been testing the WordPress WXR file import from the admin panel and noticed that imported items are not preserving the source XML dates.

The WXR file contains both:

• wp:post_date
• pubDate

But when importing from the admin UI, the resulting EmDash content does not preserve those values as created_at / published_at. Instead, the imported item gets current-time timestamps.

From tracing the code, this appears to be because the admin file-upload import flow goes through packages/core/src/astro/routes/api/import/wordpress/execute.ts, which parses WXR directly and creates content, but does not persist the source timestamps unless explicitly threaded through.

I also noticed that there is a WXR import source in packages/core/src/import/sources/wxr.ts, and that wxrPostToNormalizedItem() already maps post_date into date. However, from what I can tell, that source is not actually used by the current admin file-upload import execution flow. It looks like the admin WXR path is still using its parsing/import logic in its own route instead of the shared wxr source.

Possible approaches to resolve this:

1. Minimal fix: keep the current admin route flow, but explicitly pass post.postDate or post.pubDate through to handleContentCreate as created_at/ published_at so imported file-based WXR content preserves original timestamps
2. Shared-path fix: refactor the admin file-upload flow to use the registered wxr import source (analyze / fetchContent) so the admin panel and any future import flows share the same normalization logic.

• Is it intentional that wxr.ts is not currently used in the admin WXR file import flow?
• Is it preferable to set created_at AND published_at when importing from external sources? Or let EmDash handle created_at value as the date is was created upon import?
• Should content lists show the date published in addition to the date updated/created?

[MattieTK]

Just opened a PR to fix this on future imports #325