EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

I have been with ZC since 2002 and appreciate the efforts of those that diligently support the community. I spent 2 hours reading the entire support thread yesterday before I even asked my question to find a solution. For those that have an established store with products that have been indexed by search engines and have back links, it would be devastating to simply replace the existing products. In my case it is imperative that the product id number stay the same to support backlinks.

Thank you for the great support and taking time from paid projects to bring a valuable service.

I realized you asked about how the file was opening.... here is the text version of the file with the first product
v_products_model,v_products_type,v_products_image,v_products_name_1,v_products_d escription_1,v_products_url_1,v_specials_price,v_specials_date_avail,v_specials_ expires_date,v_products_price,v_products_id,v_products_weight,v_product_is_call, v_products_sort_order,v_products_quantity_order_min,v_products_quantity_order_un its,v_products_priced_by_attribute,v_product_is_always_free_shipping,v_date_avai l,v_date_added,v_products_quantity,v_manufacturers_name,v_categories_name_1,v_ta x_class_title,v_status,v_metatags_products_name_status,v_metatags_title_status,v _metatags_model_status,v_metatags_price_status,v_metatags_title_tagline_status,v _metatags_title_1,v_metatags_keywords_1,v_metatags_description_1
MG SIGNS,1,buttons/magneticvehiclesigns.jpg,Magnetic Signs,"<table width=""600"" bgcolor=""#e1f0ff"" align=""center""> <tbody><tr> <td valign=""top"" bordercolor=""#333333""><div> <div> <div align=""center""><strong>Magnetic Vehicle Signs</strong><br /> Printed FULL COLOR &amp; full bleed directly on a 30mil low shine magnetic material.</div> </div> </div></td> </tr> </tbody></table>",,,,,0,12,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,,5/2/04 3:30,0,,Magnetics^Magnetic Signs,Taxable Goods,0,0,0,0,0,0,,,

The date looks a little odd, but it may work/go through. I try to make sure it is in the format of YYYY-MM-DD (using all numbers).

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Originally Posted by mc12345678

Found and fixed the issue(s) with updating while not using products_model as the primary key. Haven't uploaded the fix quite yet, but will be up soon. Want to also check some of the changes made to the featured products area to address some previously pointed out issues.

Not yet sure about the 0 products updated issue... please check for any log errors in the logs directory...

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Uploaded the change(s) for this as well as a few of the other 4.0.35 items to github: https://github.com/mc12345678/EasyPopulate-4.0 in the master thread... Still working on the featured import changes.

FANTASTIC! It's working. Very thankful for the timely and efficient work on this mod. Thank you mc12345678

Quite welcome.

For everyone, submitted version 4.0.35.ZC for review and eventual posting to the ZC plugins available from here.

The use of the added ZC to the version was because on github the version had been updated to 4.0.35 and wanted to be sure that those that had installed it would be notified of the available version on ZC.

Significant changes made are that the featured import now assigns a value that ZC recognizes as a blank field if the in import of the file the available and/or expiry fields are blank, 0 or 0000-00-00.
Somehow in recent updates the ability to import by products_id was disabled by lack of code to support it. All my doing, but that functionality is restored as expected and desired above.
The code has been updated to operate without further modification if a site does not have the applicable mb_ (multibyte) functions activated.
There are other changes which are documented in the changelog of the download and can be pre-reviewed on github or upon posting of the plugin to the ZC site.

In other "news" (although this message may not be seen by all because of the time since my last post), I wanted to let others know about some upcoming planned changes/expansion to EP4.

Currently the operations of EP4 are centrally controlled by the admin file easypopulate_4.php and as applicable other actions are taken during execution of that file (import, export, etc.). Those other actions are addressed in additional external files. (ie. Import is admin/easypopulate_4_import.php). As a result of these external operations but the "central processor" being an admin file, I'd like to make the operations of EP4 available to other outside code while maintaining appropriate security to prevent non-ZC code from activating the operations. This does afterall manipulate the content of the store's database.

So, the first step in this will be to pull out code that directly supports the internal operations into sensible files that could be referenced by some other non-EP4 program in such a way that it would be poised to continue operation through reference of one or more of the other external files.

The next thing, which I'm contemplating both the operation of and potential impact on the store is taking that EP4 data and/or operation structure to a class such that a variable such as $ep4 could be used/referenced from within the admin and the applicable action could take place. So something like $ep4->import($filename) would activate the import of the file. This particular modification, the extent of which remains to be determined may affect others that piggy-back on EP4 and require some code changes to work with the data structure of that new class. Don't worry, this won't be overnight (for those with concerns) and sorry this won't be overnight (for those really wanting that functionality. :) ) There are also some things to consider like in the above example of using the import function to pull in a file, what's to say that the code couldn't be adapted to pull in a variable or some other source? Sure EP4 has been successful at working with and manipulating csv files, but what's to say it couldn't be expanded to work with more in the same controlled method to minimize bloat, processing time, and memory usage.

Anyways, just some thoughts for EP4 in addition to some of the other minification that is planned say for the import operation to pull the contents of specific file processing into its own file thus easing modifications and specialization as well as program readability.

Thoughts/discussion welcome. I'll be opening an issue for each of these on github.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mc12345678

Quite welcome.

For everyone, submitted version 4.0.35.ZC for review and eventual posting to the ZC plugins available from here.

The use of the added ZC to the version was because on github the version had been updated to 4.0.35 and wanted to be sure that those that had installed it would be notified of the available version on ZC.

Significant changes made are that the featured import now assigns a value that ZC recognizes as a blank field if the in import of the file the available and/or expiry fields are blank, 0 or 0000-00-00.
Somehow in recent updates the ability to import by products_id was disabled by lack of code to support it. All my doing, but that functionality is restored as expected and desired above.
The code has been updated to operate without further modification if a site does not have the applicable mb_ (multibyte) functions activated.
There are other changes which are documented in the changelog of the download and can be pre-reviewed on github or upon posting of the plugin to the ZC site.

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Version 4.0.35.ZC is available for download. Notification should be available for those that have previously upgraded to 4.0.34 or newer.

Additional "correction" included sanitization of attribute data that is imported through easypopulate_4_attrib.php.

I updated to the version in the link, and still get the update notification:
Easy Populate 4.0.35.ZC - 04-29-2016 - NOTE: A NEW VERSION OF THIS PLUGIN IS AVAILABLE. [Details]

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Originally Posted by henry3

I updated to the version in the link, and still get the update notification:
Easy Populate 4.0.35.ZC - 04-29-2016 - NOTE: A NEW VERSION OF THIS PLUGIN IS AVAILABLE. [Details]

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Yes it would because on my latest upload I identified it as v4.0.35.ZC on the ZC website but instead in the file as 4.0.35.ZC. I have submitted a request to the ZC team to modify the version response information to report back the coded 4.0.35.ZC. When that has been performed the notification of a newer version should cease to occur until a newer version is again posted.

Thank you for pointing that out.