EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

[chadderuski]

FIXED IT!
Looking at backup easypopulate_4.php, I rem'd out both calls to mb_internal_encoding(). If I remember correctly I asked my host to change a setting on their server and they refused so I rem'd this as a work around.

Thanks for your help
Nick

Hi Nick,

Glad you got this working. Yes, those function calls are part of working with UTF-8 encoding for multi-byte (mb_) languages. Most english will encode in 1 byte, but some can take up to three if memory serves me correctly... Just be cautious with your string lengths as they may not get calculated correctly.

if that happens, and I'll use Manufacturer as the example, then you can end up with multiple truncated entries in the database:

So, Manufacturer's name exceeds database lenght:

"Hill Billy Manufacturing and Supplies Corp" is entered in your CSV file.

EP4 goes to add this to the database because it's new, but the string is truncated to the length in the database ( you'd see that in phpMyAdmin)

"Hill Billy Manufacturing and Supplies Corp" now becomes "Hill Billy Manufacturing an" in the database.

On the next line you have another item for this Manufacturer.... EP4 does a search on the manufacture's table and does not find a match, so it add that manufacturer AGAIN, and AGAIN it's truncated.... If you have 50 items with the same manufacturer, you end up with 50 entries in your manufacturer's table....

Not so damaging... BUT, this can also happen with Category Names! So please be careful to not exceed your database's field lengths.

[mc12345678]

Hi Nick,

Glad you got this working. Yes, those function calls are part of working with UTF-8 encoding for multi-byte (mb_) languages. Most english will encode in 1 byte, but some can take up to three if memory serves me correctly... Just be cautious with your string lengths as they may not get calculated correctly.

if that happens, and I'll use Manufacturer as the example, then you can end up with multiple truncated entries in the database:

So, Manufacturer's name exceeds database lenght:

"Hill Billy Manufacturing and Supplies Corp" is entered in your CSV file.

EP4 goes to add this to the database because it's new, but the string is truncated to the length in the database ( you'd see that in phpMyAdmin)

"Hill Billy Manufacturing and Supplies Corp" now becomes "Hill Billy Manufacturing an" in the database.

On the next line you have another item for this Manufacturer.... EP4 does a search on the manufacture's table and does not find a match, so it add that manufacturer AGAIN, and AGAIN it's truncated.... If you have 50 items with the same manufacturer, you end up with 50 entries in your manufacturer's table....

Not so damaging... BUT, this can also happen with Category Names! So please be careful to not exceed your database's field lengths.

Chadd,

Good explanation. To confirm though, if mbstring is used as originally incorporated, could you elaborate how this all would happen? (I don't want to guess and cause confusion.)

[BlackOrchidCouture]

Hello, I did a new install of Easy Populate 4.0 on a fresh install of Zen Cart 1.5.3. It installed correctly, shows up in Tools and also in Configure, but when I click on it to configure it, it can't find the page, it's a 404 error. It goes to mystore/myadmin/configuration.php?gID=53. Does this sound like a familiar problem that anyone else has had? Any ideas on how to fix it? Thanks!!

[mc12345678]

Hello, I did a new install of Easy Populate 4.0 on a fresh install of Zen Cart 1.5.3. It installed correctly, shows up in Tools and also in Configure, but when I click on it to configure it, it can't find the page, it's a 404 error. It goes to mystore/myadmin/configuration.php?gID=53. Does this sound like a familiar problem that anyone else has had? Any ideas on how to fix it? Thanks!!

While hopefully others will also respond, I did a similar action this last weekend, to both a 1.5.3 and 1.5.1 cart with no issues. Are you able to access the tools menu option, uninstall and then select the install option at the top again. Should be presented with an error about the existence (absence) of the temp directory, unless you have that directory in your store's path.

[mc12345678]

The gID=53 part of the path, merely indicates the number assigned to that menu option. Are you able to access other configuration settings? Ie under My Store or product Layout, for example?

[BlackOrchidCouture]

Thanks for answering so quickly! Oh, interesting, I was able to access other configuration settings earlier, and just assumed that the only one I couldn't access was Easy Populate since that was the one I was trying to access, but just tried others and they all go to a 404 error as well. I fixed the error about the missing directory when I first installed Easy Populate, just created a temp folder (but called it the name it said that I was missing). I was able to get all the errors to go away. I can access it in Tools, so I'm going to try your uninstall/install suggestion....

[BlackOrchidCouture]

Uninstalled and installed again successfully, but still can't access any configurations....

[mc12345678]

Yeah, you did all that before I could reply to indicate that since your other configuration options are not working is that somehow your store/admin/configuration.php file has something wrong (totally unrelated to EP4), either it isnot present or has been renamed or something. EP4 does not modify that file. It simply is used to access the various options thaat are set in the database (table configuration).