Importing from an external dropship site

[schoolboy]

Is there a manual anywhere that explains what fields Zen Cart requires for a product or category import?

I've a CSV file from a drop shipping supplier and need to bring this into my cart, through whatever method, but need to make sure that the fields tally.

Thanks

For people who struggle with SQL commands and queries, Easy Populate is the most practical way to upload and administer product information in your zenshop.

See above for links to Easy Populate module.

My Easy Populate tutorial is here:
http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Easy_Populate

[mm99]

Hi
i have 16000 products to import and every day that changes too.so i have to update them.is it any easy way to change the Column Headings in excel,stead of all copy and past .
thanks

[schoolboy]

Hi
i have 16000 products to import and every day that changes too.so i have to update them.is it any easy way to change the Column Headings in excel,stead of all copy and past .
thanks

No...

(But doing this manually only takes a couple of minutes...)

[mm99]

yes you are right .specially for updating price and quantity .but my drop ship site ,almost add some new product everyday.maybe i have to look for some program to compare and sync excel files.
thank you for reply

[jgg1974]

If you are able to grab your supplier's product data as a csv file or even a MS Excel spreadsheet, the easiest way to load it into your database is to use EasyPopulate.

If you are using Zencart version 1.3.xxx (including 1.3.8a) then the version of EP you need is 1.2.5.4 available from Langer's Modhole (www.modhole.com - follow links to Easy Populate Standard).

If your supplier provides a list of image url's, the easiest way to get all the images is to use wget. This program automatically downloads all the images from the remote site to your hard drive.

Your supplier's spreadsheet is likely to have a column that lists the paths to the images - something like:

http://www.supplier.com/images/1234567.jpg
http://www.supplier.com/images/2345678.jpg
http://www.supplier.com/images/3456789.jpg

Copy this column and paste it into a plain text editor (notepad++), then save it as a .txt file .

Save this file in the root (c:) of your hard drive.

(We used this last night to grab over 4000 images - took 30 minutes).

Get wget from:-

http://sourceforge.net/project/downl...se_mirror=garr

install it

open a cmd prompt e.g. start | run | type: cmd
in the command prompt type cd.. press enter

type this again till you get to just the c:

(The program may be located in a BIN folder, and if so, the likely path will be: C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin. At the c: prompt, type cd Program Files\GnuWin32\bin)

When you reach this location...

type wget -i c:\textfile.txt (replace textfile.txt with the name of the textfile you created)

let it run till it downloads all your images. (They will be located in the bin folder, so later you can move them to another folder).

you will now have a folder with all the images as they were on the remote server.

You can then FTP the images to your own server.

question, i tried this and it said it downloaded my pictures, but i cant find them, i did exactly like you wrote and looked in bin folder, ??

[jgg1974]

question, i tried this and it said it downloaded my pictures, but i cant find them, i did exactly like you wrote and looked in bin folder, ??

ANY!?

[schoolboy]

If you know what one of the images is called, use the search function in windows to locate it, or use FF at the command prompt.

[jgg1974]

I did the search but no luck finding the image, also can you tell me what is FF?

thanks

[abs007]

hi
thanks for the useful information on the scraping tool schoolboy.

I also cant find the images - I looked in the .bin file and there are about 4.dll files. one file is about 1,150kb which might be the one holding the images but i cant seem to open it.

Ive done a search for the images and windows just points me to the datafeed from which i pulled the urls from.

ANy idea

thanks

[schoolboy]

I use the wget function regularly, and I follow the procedure I outlined. The images are always in my bin folder

(dos-path c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin )

On your computer, go to START button and open command screen (cmd).

when in DOS mode, change directories until you have the following:

c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin >

Then at the command prompt, type DIR, then hit [Enter] key.