Quote Originally Posted by k9dug View Post
Thanks mc1-8,

OK, I am sort of getting my head round this..

I can create new products by downloading, editing and then importing a Full_ csv.

I can create new attributes for existing products by downloading, editing and then import an Attrib-Basic csv. I've checked in the database and even if I create the same name of attribute for different products, it gets created just once and the id re-used. Good.

To add price to a attributes, for each product, I have to download, edit and then import an Attrib-Detailed csv. Here I add the price, sort order, and any other values specific to an attribute for a particular product. All seems to work. (It does seem strange that the product option name is listed twice for each attribute, in both Attrib-Basic (v_products_options_name_1) and Attrib-Detailed (v_products_options_name)).

OK so it works, albeit with a sequence of 3 file downloads and 3 file imports.

What I need to be able to do is condense this down into a single file import. The reason is, I have to be able to export a full list and send that to my client. He has to be able to easily read the spreadsheet and carry out the following changes:

1. add products
2. add attributes
3. alter attribute prices

Much of my data will be default / handled by me, or I can write code to generate it (eg product model), but I cannot hand over three spreadsheets for monthly updates.

Does this seem feasible, at least for my limited set of procedures?

I can see various ways to do this, such as taking the order of v_products_options_values_name_1 to generate the sort order, using multiple rows per product etc...
So, overall, I would say it looks like you have grasped the default usage. To get your client looking at the data, you could create a new export that would have all the data in one spreadsheet, the complexity though increases as the number of category types for a product does. Though you could make it relatively easy depending on how you want to present your data to your client and of course, what you want to deal with when it comes back.

All of the functions are present in the code to accomplish what you describe, but would need to sort of reorder/group/resequence them to suit the file designation of your choosing. That is further why I stated that it is a powerful plug-in, because almost anything desired to be done with a default database is there.

As for duplicate titles, it is my understanding that there is a move afoot to make the plug-in more multi-language functional and that was what the appended number was primarily about. (Ie language 1, language 2, etc with each language designation meaning something that I can't remember at the moment).

Basically your export code file would contain the formatting and SQL statements to create your client file, and then your import code file would parse the CSV based on the filename.

As an FYI, most likely your client will not have the program(s) necessary to properly save a CSV that would work with this plug-in, so something would need to be done to facilitate that, either you properly save it, or your client obtains a method to properly save it.