EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

[mc12345678]

I used the EP to download a Model/Category and it said Inkjet^Advent as I had only imported the advent CSV file but through the store Inkjet had no sub categories. Sorry if that's not what you meant, you`ve helped a lot over the last few days so you should know that I'm a beginner, this is my last hurdle.

In a way that's what I meant, if I understand correctly. (which I'm not entirely sure that I do.)

My thoughts were this. If you already have at least one category that is a sub-category (preferably "manually" generated groups), then export of product (active or all) for that category (or sub-category) using the dropdowns across the top of the EP4 tools/admin screen would reflect the information/way that EP4 would expect the data to be made available to reproduce the same type/style of a product.

Mind you, again, the file generated is UTF-8 and the file normally expected for upload followed by import should also be in UTF-8 format. Further, the expectation is that if you look at the raw csv file using a plain text editor both before and after editing, they should look relatively similar. EP4 does add some extra double quotes (" not ') around information, that at least when using Open Office tend not to be "put back", but that's not necessarily an issue.

Anyways, I don't want to overload, especially if the first couple of things above address the issue (again, assuming I understand correctly)

[MCS_Computers]

It has to be a EP4 thing because my previous version imports the CSV and the store shows category and sub categories as it should

[mc12345678]

It has to be a EP4 thing because my previous version imports the CSV and the store shows category and sub categories as it should

Umm. The proof of the "EP4" thing would be to export the file, then do nothing with it but upload and then import it again. The result should be no change to the site.

Then considering that the upload/import of an untouched file works, the next thing is to modify something about the file and repeat the upload/import. The only thing that should change is what was modified.

EP4 works to generate new categories as well as to add product to existing/new categories. If it doesn't for the particular site, then we need to start talking about information that is provided on the EP4 screen to see what isn't correctly setup, the configuration settings, and/or the details of generating the modified csv file.

If need be, PM me login details.

[MCS_Computers]

MC thanks yet again you pointed me in the direction to fix it.

In the older version of EP it created 2 columns, v_categories_name_1 and v_categories_name_2

1 had Inkjet in and 2 had Advent in, I deleted the 2 column and changed 1 from Inkjet to Inkjet^Advent, re imported the CSV and it worked a treat.

Many thanks once again buddy, it is much appreciated..

[mc12345678]

MC thanks yet again you pointed me in the direction to fix it.

In the older version of EP it created 2 columns, v_categories_name_1 and v_categories_name_2

1 had Inkjet in and 2 had Advent in, I deleted the 2 column and changed 1 from Inkjet to Inkjet^Advent, re imported the CSV and it worked a treat.

Many thanks once again buddy, it is much appreciated..

As discussed in one of the other threads, EP4 uses that number to correspond to a language. Yes, it's a little bit of a puzzle and I've been wanting to change the number to a language, but there were other more important fixes to apply over time. At any rate, if you go multi-language, then you can use EP4 to populate the associated language fields using the applicable v_FIELD_LANGUAGEID. Where FIELD might be something like products_description, category, etc... LANGUAGEID would be the number next to the language that you see on the right side of the EP4 tools screen.

[Feznizzle]

I'm in the process of building a catalog with about 25,000 products. Even when the data is segmented into groups of 5,000 products, my spreadsheet (libreoffice) bogs down when all data is present (particularly the html for product description pages).

To make this manageable, I want to upload/insert in stages. First I'll CREATE products by inserting bare minimum info (model, ID, Category, Prod name, qty, status, order units, etc). After that, I'll come back and UPDATE those products by inserting additional data (image, price, description, etc).

The following questions are about working with product files (eg, Full-EP2017Sep26-165412.csv).

Product page creation questions:
1. When creating NEW product pages, can I leave the following columns blank (no data)?
v_products_description_1
v_products_price
v_products_weight
v_date_avail
v_date_added

If not, I'll insert small dummy info to replace during later updates.

2. When creating NEW product pages, can I *delete* columns I don't need at the moment (meta data, specials, etc) to reduce clutter? Or does EP4 freak out if columns it expects don't exist?

Updating product page questions:
3. When updating EXISTING product pages, can I *delete* columns I don't wish to change (category, product name) to reduce clutter? Obviously I'll keep the important ones (model, ID, etc).

4. If I have to keep all columns, can I leave the ones I don't wish to change blank?

[mc12345678]

Sorry for the delay in responding.

So... First thing and I know it doesn't directly help with the local effort of adding product to the spreadsheet, but EP4 offers the ability to split a file that is either exported to the server or uploaded to the server. So you could (later) do updates of existing data by exporting, then splitting then downloading so that when you open the file you aren't "troubled" by too many rows/too much data.

That said, if you haven't downloaded the github version which supports product export without including linked product, then when a set of data is split, there is the possibility, however remote, that a row of data for a product could be in one split file and another... the last one imported wins...

To your questions about uploading new product. The concept of the software is that when working with the main product information, only required fields need to be in the file. For new product that is a primary key and a category. For any field not included, generally speaking it will default to some form of emptiness. For dates, if the date_added field is not included, then it will default to now, whenever now is. If the field is included and it is blank or has a date less than 0001-01-01 00:00:00, then it will be set to that (which should be the default in the database, but that's a different story.) v_date_avail does not default to a now condition, but instead a "blank" condition.

As to product status, if it is not provided then it should default to either off (disabled) or the status default in your database. There is a consideration though as to if a product is uploaded that has 0 quantity and the store is set to deactivate product that have 0 quantity then the product will be deactivated regardless of the condition of the uploaded status. Sort of an EP4 working with ZC condition.

Otherwise, regarding your "plan" for updating. Again, when discussing the main product information (not yet incorporated in attributes and a couple other off-shoots), if you don't want to even possibly change a field, then the field column should and can be omitted. If the field is present, whatever is in that column will be attempted to be pushed to the database. If that means the column is blank, then the data will be removed, if it changed from "up" to "down" then "down" will be what remains...

Now, if I have incorrectly stated these things, such that the software does not operate as I have described, please identify as it more than likely is a mistake.

Now, attributes and category specific changes, I know attributes haven't been further modified to permit import with fields missing, but I think at the moment that category import is the same (operation hasn't been modified to support upload with missing fields).

Again, to your last question, there has not been a setting established to leave a field alone if the field is present but the row data is blank. I don't seem to recall anyone asking for that and I tend to look at it as extra work to blank a field to prevent an update as compared to possibly two different file imports or to leave the data as is. (it's possible in most spreadsheet programs to "lock" a field to prevent editing, so would recommend that route instead personally...)

[Feznizzle]

Sorry for the delay in responding.

So... First thing and I know it doesn't directly help with the local effort of adding product to the spreadsheet, but EP4 offers the ability to split a file that is either exported to the server or uploaded to the server. So you could (later) do updates of existing data by exporting, then splitting then downloading so that when you open the file you aren't "troubled" by too many rows/too much data.

That said, if you haven't downloaded the github version which supports product export without including linked product, then when a set of data is split, there is the possibility, however remote, that a row of data for a product could be in one split file and another... the last one imported wins...

To your questions about uploading new product. The concept of the software is that when working with the main product information, only required fields need to be in the file. For new product that is a primary key and a category. For any field not included, generally speaking it will default to some form of emptiness. For dates, if the date_added field is not included, then it will default to now, whenever now is. If the field is included and it is blank or has a date less than 0001-01-01 00:00:00, then it will be set to that (which should be the default in the database, but that's a different story.) v_date_avail does not default to a now condition, but instead a "blank" condition.

As to product status, if it is not provided then it should default to either off (disabled) or the status default in your database. There is a consideration though as to if a product is uploaded that has 0 quantity and the store is set to deactivate product that have 0 quantity then the product will be deactivated regardless of the condition of the uploaded status. Sort of an EP4 working with ZC condition.

Otherwise, regarding your "plan" for updating. Again, when discussing the main product information (not yet incorporated in attributes and a couple other off-shoots), if you don't want to even possibly change a field, then the field column should and can be omitted. If the field is present, whatever is in that column will be attempted to be pushed to the database. If that means the column is blank, then the data will be removed, if it changed from "up" to "down" then "down" will be what remains...

Now, if I have incorrectly stated these things, such that the software does not operate as I have described, please identify as it more than likely is a mistake.

Now, attributes and category specific changes, I know attributes haven't been further modified to permit import with fields missing, but I think at the moment that category import is the same (operation hasn't been modified to support upload with missing fields).

Again, to your last question, there has not been a setting established to leave a field alone if the field is present but the row data is blank. I don't seem to recall anyone asking for that and I tend to look at it as extra work to blank a field to prevent an update as compared to possibly two different file imports or to leave the data as is. (it's possible in most spreadsheet programs to "lock" a field to prevent editing, so would recommend that route instead personally...)

YAHOOO! That bolded out statement is faaaaantabulous!

To be super clear, you're saying that after a product has been added, future uploaded files can (and should) contain only the primary key (for me it's ID) and the column(s) containing data I wish to insert/change?

For instance, I could upload a csv with only two columns of data like so:
v_products_id and v_products_description_1

If so... awesome. This just got really easy. :)

Thank you so much for providing so much info!

[mc12345678]

YAHOOO! That bolded out statement is faaaaantabulous!

To be super clear, you're saying that after a product has been added, future uploaded files can (and should) contain only the primary key (for me it's ID) and the column(s) containing data I wish to insert/change?

For instance, I could upload a csv with only two columns of data like so:
v_products_id and v_products_description_1

If so... awesome. This just got really easy. :)

Thank you so much for providing so much info!

That's the expectation. If it doesn't deliver that way, please advise. There's a lot of possible columns and I don't think each individual scenario was attempted, but it was all based on a philosophy developed by the needs of those that asked and demonstrated how such feature(s) could be advantageous and make the work easier. :) So, if I lied to you, I'd like the opportunity to either fix the issue or explain why it is the way it is.