Manually Set Category ID

[ryanp]

I match the category IDs in Zen-Cart with the product categories in my book keeping software.

Unfortunately, I accidently deleted a category in Zen-Cart and need to add it again but with the same ID as before. In this case 59. When I add a new category the counter is at 88.

Can I reset the counter to create the next category with the ID 59? If so where? The counters in Admin->Tools->Store Manager didn't seem to apply.

If not is there a SQL statement that would work. Could someone give me an example?

Thanks in advance.

Patrick

[Ajeh]

You would need to edit the two tables for:
categories
categories_name

and change the categories_id to the one you deleted ...

[ryanp]

It worked but I also needed to change the category id of the products in the category since I forgot to move them first.

To help anyone with a similar problem here are the commands I used. (make a backup before doing this just in case)


update categories set categories_id = 59 where categories_id = 12;

update categories_description set categories_id = 59 where categories_id = 12;


Only if you forgot to move the products out of the old category!

update products set master_categories_id = 59 where master_categories_id = 12;

update products_to_categories set categories_id = 59 where categories_id = 12;

Regards,

Patrick

[roadliner]

You would need to edit the two tables for:
categories
categories_name

and change the Categories_id to the one you deleted ...

I would like to reset my categories ID to 0 after messing around with how I would like my categories set up. How do you edit the tables you mentioned above?

Thanks much and great forum!

[Ajeh]

You mean reset to 0 so you can go move them to the proper Categories?

NOTE: you cannot leave any left at 0 or you will run into conflicts with the pricing, sorting, searching etc.

If you didn't have any Linked Products, you can run:

UPDATE products_to_categories SET categories_id = 0; 

If you had Linked Products, then we need to get trickier on this ...

[roadliner]

Thanks for the quick response. I don't have any products at all since this is my first install and set up with ZC.

Sorry for the newbie question but where do I find that PHP code and how do I run it?

[Ajeh]

You can reset an empty table with the TRUNCATE TABLE command:

Example, for categories you can use:

TRUNCATE TABLE categories;

[roadliner]

Sorry but I'm so new at this php stuff that what you're telling me is Greek.

Can you tell me how to do this without a command line? (This is what my host company told me to ask.) I have phpMyAdmin on my host account if that helps. It shows all the different fields like zen_categories but this shows no records at all.

Thanks again!

[Ajeh]

If you are not familiar with phpMyAdmin and the methods of reviewing the tables ... this is hard to tell you what to do and make sure that you are doing this safely ...

So far, you said you had categories ...

how did they get removed?

Did you have products?

Did you have Orders? Customers? etc. etc.

An empty database table can have its auto increment reset to 1 by using the TRUNCATE command ...

If the table name is categories you use:

TRUNCATE TABLE categories;

If the table name is zen_categories, meaning you are using prefixes on your table names, then categories is zen_categories so you use:
TRUNCATE TABLE zen_categories;

If you are really uncertain as to what you are doing you can backup your database ...

[roadliner]

I had categories but deleted them because I was figuring out how to lay out my categories. I don't have any products, orders or customers.

So in phpMyAdmin, I see that the zen_categories has a Next Autoindex # of 16 which I want to reset to 0. How do I do this using phpMA?

Worst case, I can delete this database and create a new one.