EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

[mc12345678]

I think it is working. I got the file, and it looked actually fine in my post above, except I question why the 1st example had so many quotes around the word Classic first few words. Is this because I used quotes in the actual filename? That could be dangerous, I guess, and I will change this to avoid confusion. What about the pictures? Does the file only need the image location, or am I looking for pictures here in the file. Also, if I use IH4, should I upload all pictures separately, or does the program do this in an integrated way?

To learn this best way possible, what should I read, the wiki?

Finally, do I import the OO file in the spreadsheet to change, or do I export the comma delimited quote enclosed text file itself? Thank you all for your knowledge and application of it to help others.
Marc

So, the double quotes are needed as part of importing/exporting the data to provide the final result of a single set of quotes around the word. There is no reason to avoid that if the desire is to have the word(s) in quotes when viewing a product on your website. It's just part of the process of converting what is stored to what is seen and vice versa.

As for the pictures, and just about everything associated with EP4, this plugin (and I have somewhat said this before) interfaces directly with the data that is presented in the store, so yes things can go wrong and negatively effect what is shown/done on the store. (Backup before making change, review/become familiar with affects of action taken.) Unfortunately there is little documentation associated with this plugin at this time, but the author has been working on that and it is why this is not yet an official zen cart plugin. To that end, the issue with/question about the pictures is related to how Zen Cart (and other plugins such as Image Handler) deals with pictures. Zen Cart requires a base picture name and picture file(s) associated with that name. The name is the path to where the picture(s). Are stored, and the base name for all pictures associated with that product. So to learn more about the picture part, there are wiki related entries to how to have more than one picture associated with a product. At the same time, if that knowledge is not learned, then it is possible to inadvertently have more pictures shown than expected.

So yes, you will need to also upload/verify uploaded the pictures that will be displayed. My recommendation would be to first upload the file(s) then to use EP4 to have them displayed (prevents any customer from not seeing a picture when the EP4 entry is uploaded.) The entry made in EP4 should reflect the base name (path included) when uploading.

As for the question of chicken and egg, I'm not sure I understand, but the process is this for a "first" time action: backup your database; download the EP4 data as a CSV; open the file using a program that can manage a CSV file (Open Office is recommended because out of the box it can be setup to export a CSV that will be properly interpreted upon upload), make the desired changes, additions, modifications desired; export the data from the editor (recommend a filename that ends differently than before); import/upload the file to EP4; maybe backup your database again in case changes made would be overwritten if the database was restored from the last backup; and then import the new CSV file from within EP4 and check the results. If the results are good, keep doing what you're doing, if not, then restore from your most recent backup.

So hopefully that answers that last question.

[dgantonacci]

Ok... I finally need some help myself. I got everything setup. I built my CSV table. Imported... worked fine. Go to my site and all shows up. Click on ANY product and I get 404 Page Not Found from my site.

Have a look if you like... www.obesupply.com">www.obesupply.com

Anyone have an explanation or solution?

Thanks.

[mc12345678]

Ok... I finally need some help myself. I got everything setup. I built my CSV table. Imported... worked fine. Go to my site and all shows up. Click on ANY product and I get 404 Page Not Found from my site.

Have a look if you like... www.obesupply.com">www.obesupply.com

Anyone have an explanation or solution?

Thanks.

Can't specifically identify why this has happened to you. It does seem that product numbers have gotten modified in some way. I randoml attempted a product numberafter observing what you described as a 404 page not found. The page not found was assumed to be your entire site, not the Zen Cart page not found error that exists. In the main body area of the site. So, I found that: http://www.obesupply.com/index.php?m...ducts_id=18190 provided a product description, but I couldn't tell you if that product id is the one that you expected it to be and if it was at all involved with the file upload you provided.

So there is more that you could describe to try to narrow down what happened: what editor did you use, using a file compare programn how does the downloaded CSV file compare to the uploaded CSV file? What error log messages do you have if any? Did you install this app in parallel with a similar one instead of uninstalling all parts of the previous? When did this start happening (first upload?) Did the upload include all items from your store? If not, do those that were not affected work as expected? What changes were you trying to make(ie what did you change in the file before uploading)? If you downloaded a new CSV file now and did a comparison of the uploaded and newly downloaded, what's different?

Something in there should help either answer your question(s) or help us help you. :)

[favjola]

I write for first time on this forum

hello to all

I wonder if with the plugin easypopulate 4 I import products of more 'than 2 levels of categories.?

thanks

[favjola]

maybe I'm wrong, and I'm glad to be wrong! in the short guide of the plugin there is textually

"Categories are handled differently from other versions of EP. You can now import multilingual categories (Like Products Names, descriptions, etc.).
To achieve this, each v_categories_names_1, v_categories_names_2, etc. correspond to a language installed in your system, and individual category
names are separated by the Carat "^" symbol. For Example: Bar Supplies^Glass Washers^Brushes

"Bar Supplies" will be your Top level Category, with "Glass Washers" as a sub-directory, and "Brushes" as a sub-directory of "Glass Washers"."



in this case seems to support 3 levels of product categories.............

[mc12345678]

maybe I'm wrong, and I'm glad to be wrong! in the short guide of the plugin there is textually

"Categories are handled differently from other versions of EP. You can now import multilingual categories (Like Products Names, descriptions, etc.).
To achieve this, each v_categories_names_1, v_categories_names_2, etc. correspond to a language installed in your system, and individual category
names are separated by the Carat "^" symbol. For Example: Bar Supplies^Glass Washers^Brushes

"Bar Supplies" will be your Top level Category, with "Glass Washers" as a sub-directory, and "Brushes" as a sub-directory of "Glass Washers"."



in this case seems to support 3 levels of product categories.............

Hopefully I understood correctly, you want to know if a single product can be uploaded to an area of your site that is for example in a sub-sub-sub-etc Category of a category. For example: The "product" (Dog named Fluffy to be located in the category path of Animal->Mammal->Canine->Small Breed->Chihuahua.

Yes, it will place the "product" Fluffy in the sub category Animal^Mammal^Canine^Small Breed^Chihuahua when uploaded with that information.
Off the top of my head, I thought that it would create those categories if they did not exist automatically when uploading the product; however, I know that there is at least one file format that processes the entry to create the new category(ies) if they don't exist. The existence of the category is dependent on Capitalization as well. As you may have read, Chihuahua and chihuahua are two different categories when processed by the plugin, so a "new" category would be created if it didn't exist at the point the record was imported.

1) Does that help and 2) did I understand your question correctly?

[BlessIsaacola]

I am wondering if someone can please tell if this mod support product deletion. What I want is to use this mod (if possible to delete all products from our server that are no longer available). In the other Easy Populate, changing the status to 99 deletes the product from the server but I don't know how to accomplish the same goal in this mod. Thanks!

[cherylc]

Sorry I'm new here and not sure how to post a new thread. I'm also a newbie using Zen Cart and I'm currently using EP4. The problem I'm having is that when I upload my attributes to the site the items are then listed with the following *Mixed ON. I didn't have this problem when using EasyPopulate and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I am having to manually change all the items on the admin console through the price manager. I'm not sure where the problem is as when I upload the full ep products are uploading to the site fine but when I upload the attributes file that's when it happens. I'm using the Basic attributes file. The Qty Min/Unit Mix:is switched to 'no' so I'm having to edit every item to switch it to yes. Any help greatly appreciated.

[mc12345678]

Sorry I'm new here and not sure how to post a new thread. I'm also a newbie using Zen Cart and I'm currently using EP4. The problem I'm having is that when I upload my attributes to the site the items are then listed with the following *Mixed ON. I didn't have this problem when using EasyPopulate and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I am having to manually change all the items on the admin console through the price manager. I'm not sure where the problem is as when I upload the full ep products are uploading to the site fine but when I upload the attributes file that's when it happens. I'm using the Basic attributes file. The Qty Min/Unit Mix:is switched to 'no' so I'm having to edit every item to switch it to yes. Any help greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the forums!
I would say that your post is good, it defines your problem, identifies how you have basically repeated it. Perhaps there could be more about the version(s) of things you have installed; however, I would say that there is sufficient information to start problem solving the situation.

You said you are using the basic attributes file to upload your data, have you gone back after a basic upload and done a detailed attributes upload? Or an update of the all products? (I am not sure where the mixed attribute field is brought out of ZC via EP4 to be able to describe in what file to set the value and then upload into ZC/EP4.) In the mean time, it may be necessary to run a SQL statement to toggle the Mixed attribute on (which would be faster than digging into each product).

[cherylc]

Hi. thanks for your reply. No I haven't done a detailed attributes upload as I'm not sure how to do this. I was getting along with EasyPopulate fine then it just stopped working. Apparently there is some kind of bug? I've really struggled with EP4 - I'm OK with the full EP just the attributes files. I know I sound hopeless but I'm not sure how to run a SQL statement. Like I said I'm a total newbie to all this and am learning as I go along. I managed to find where the problem lies in the admin console but just can't figure out what it is on my files which is causing this to switch to 'no'. Also, the admin console runs really slow on my pc so yesterday it took me over 2 hours to edit 111 items. By the way I'm using Excel - don't know if this makes a difference. I'm also using version 1.5.1 of Zen Cart