Using Filemaker to manage Zen Cart?

[Feznizzle]

Hi,

I am new to ZC, currently migrating from CRE.

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DETAILS FIRST:
I have been playing with ZC 1.3.8 on a VPS. I am about to upgrade to v1.3.9a.

Have the following mods:
• A site Template
• Image Handler 2
• Easy Populate Advanced
• Admin Category/Product Images
• Backup MySite V1.f
• Backup mySQL v1.3

Will be adding Lightbox and some other mods.
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I would like to use Filemaker's ESS to manage my ZC db live.

Why? Because I currently have around 10,000 products and expect grow very quickly to 50,000+.

I would like to do the following:
• Manage customers and orders
• Manage product entry/updates

My questions:
1. Are there any ZC mods that address this?
2. Are there any Filemaker templates/solutions for this?

I can't imagine that a ZC mod is needed since FM would edit the sql directly. So all that would be needed is a FM interface/template.

Because of my extremely limited experience with FM/SQL and database mgt, I am hoping there is an out of the box solution. I can figure stuff out, but it will take me forever to design one from scratch.

Any thoughts, advice, suggestions, links, or whatever would be greatly appreciated. Love to hear from anybody who has done it.

Thanks,
Mike

[schoolboy]

ZC cannot be managed using filemaker... unless you know some way of configuring the filemaker database to be compatible with ZC... but beware... the relational element of the ZC database can be tricky.

For certain data sets (products) you can EXPORT from filemaker as a CSV or XLS, and then by using the EASY POPULATE module, (which you have) you can bring these products into ZC.

Customers and orders... there are a variety of modules that can be bolted on, as well as the inherent features in the admin panel.

[Feznizzle]

Thanks for the input, schoolboy, even though I am super bummed to hear it!

[animetraderuk]

Dependant on which version of FileMaker you are using and what you're attempting to do - your mileage may vary. For example, at work I have several FM7/8 dbs that delete/import/export data from MySQL sources.

Just a matter of getting the retarded MySQL ODBC connector in place

[Feznizzle]

OH MY GOSH YES!

That MySQL ODBC is insane!

I down loaded FM11 trial yesterday, just to see what I could see. I was all excited, thought FM was gonna make my life easy. Grabbed a big ole cup of java, sat down with great anticipation, pulled up the ODBC and here is what happened:


Grrrrr! Retarded is putting it lightly.

I finally got tired of trying to connect live, used the zen backup mysql and open it in FM.

Even that was kind of annoying.

animetraderuk, do you know of any trick to the ODBC? Plugins? "Solutions" that don't cost a zillion $?

I really REALLY want to design a little FM GUI for Zen. I may just do a Bento GUI that can interact with Easy Populate Advance. But I'd much rather connect via mySQL and bypass the Easy Pop entirely.

A FM GUI for zen could revolutionize zen. Think of it... you could replicate the entire Admin section. Adding/editing products would become a synch. You could sync all your customer/order info.

I'd love to hear how you are connecting.

[schoolboy]

MagneticOne's Store Manager (a commercial offering) provides a local interface for the ZC database and facilitates the management of the database on a local machine outside of the ZC admin interface. There are some advantages to this, as one can manage product data en-masse using spreadsheets. Some argue that this interface is better than Easy Populate.

While it has nothing to do with FM, the techniques used by MagneticOne may provide a direction you could follow in your efforts to bridge Fm with ZC.

[Feznizzle]

Good call, schoolboy!

I went and checked out their store manager. Seems very similar to what I envision. Very clunky looking, but functionality seems similar. I plan to read more about it. I wonder if they can import and, later, export directly to the SQL?

I really want to take a run at this. Problem is I'm a FM newbie. I'm quick but this looks like a pretty steep curve.

If anybody can point me in the right direction with the FM MySQL ODBC I would really appreciate it.

[fontaholic]

i too wish filemaker (8), easy populate (1.2.5.4) and zen cart (1.3.8 on my local machine for now) would all work together for me, even if it's just to manage my product information. right now i have a flat database of my products (local installation for now) and i'm struggling with how to best export the information for easy populate.

My store will launch with approximately 5000 products with Three different primary categories (Departments, Intention, Tradition) with subcategories. In my filemaker db I use the Department record of each model number for the details of the product, description, etc. The other two are just linked records with Category info.

the best method i've found so far is to export the filemaker info to excel format, open it in excel and scan it for data issues. then make smaller easy populate chunks saving them as text (tab seperated). i can upload about 1000 records successfully.

i'm getting a lot of fields with ################# repeated over and over in description fields and am trying to find the special characters that are causing this. i replaced " with &quot (with the ;) and ' with &apop, etc. and exported again and some are working but others are not. Is there a resource that might give me some insight on how i can get this working, with any export or text cleanup advice, or if anyone knows which special characters do and don't work. I have a list of the character codes, will I have to replace every dash, question mark and period in my product descriptions with a code?