Apsona ShopAdmin - a free tool for import/mass update/reporting

[apsona]

I have been trying, through this program, to access the products_discount_quantity file so I can export, to make changes and import back, without any luck.
With my limited knowledge, can't seem to find the file in Apsona.
Help please?
Rufusclc

This is a hard one. We tried to incorporate support for discounts, but it doesn't seem very easy. The database table for product discounts has no primary key, and the Zen Cart code seems to use the <discount_id, products_id> combination as the key to the table. And we don't yet support such compound keys. It would have bee SO much easier if the table had a straight auto-increment primary key.

Another quickie question:
I would like to export from the products file the products_discount_type filed together with the product ID.
I get the product ID but I don't see the other field noted in the export options box.
help
Rufusclc

The Discount type is part of the product record - below is an image to show it. (Assuming that's indeed what you're alluding to?)


Hope this helps.

[rufusclc]

Thanx Apsona for the answer to part 2 of my questions,
any chance of in the near future doing something with the products_discount_quantity file?
RufusCLC

[lankeeyankee]

I'm not sure what the developers of Apsona are getting out of this?? They don't charge for the service and the scripts are hosted on their server, so this is costing them money in development time/customer service (in this forum and elsewhere) and server costs. You have to create an account to even use this service, what's that about?? There is nowhere to make a donation to the project as far as I can see, so again what does Apsona have to gain from this?? You'll notice on their site there is no mission statement, no about us, no telling you the reason why they are doing what they are doing.....

Am I just being paranoid? Why isn't this released as a product that is entirely hosted on the client server?? Why do I have to use remote scripts to use this product? Why do I have to create an account? I just can't get my head around doing all of this for free.... am I missing something? There isn't even a section on their site to hire them for commercial applications/modifications/etc, so how are they making any money from this? It can't be all out of love....

It looks kind of cool and I'd like to try it out but I have serious misgivings since the scripts doing the real work are on a remote server so I have no way to DEFINITIVELY know that all scripts are 100% benign since I can't look at the code that is interfacing with my cart's admin section!! We are pretty large and have a lot of sensitive data that could possibly be "harvested" for other uses.

I keep coming back to these questions every time I see this thread. And this statement from the Apsona's site FAQ:
"The ShopAdmin system works entirely within the context of your shopping cart application. It does not cause any security risks." is pretty vague and doesn't inspire confidence since it gives no specific details about how it interacts with your cart, and of course, since the scripts are hosted remotely there is NO WAY TO VERIFY THIS!! Plus, it DOESN'T work "entirely within the context of your shopping cart application" since it's using scripts that are remotely hosted, sorry to sound like a broken record and all that....but

Why not release this to be hosted on the individual's server with open source - non-obfuscated- code?? What do you, Apsona, have to gain by hosting this on your servers and forcing people to create an account before they can use it?? What am I missing here? Am I alone in thinking these things?? Does anyone agree with this? Or am I just being paranoid about letting an unvetted script full access to my data?

[gxjenkins]

I'm not sure what the developers of Apsona are getting out of this?? They don't charge for the service and the scripts are hosted on their server, so this is costing them money in development time/customer service (in this forum and elsewhere) and server costs. You have to create an account to even use this service, what's that about?? There is nowhere to make a donation to the project as far as I can see, so again what does Apsona have to gain from this?? You'll notice on their site there is no mission statement, no about us, no telling you the reason why they are doing what they are doing.....

Am I just being paranoid? Why isn't this released as a product that is entirely hosted on the client server?? Why do I have to use remote scripts to use this product? Why do I have to create an account? I just can't get my head around doing all of this for free.... am I missing something? There isn't even a section on their site to hire them for commercial applications/modifications/etc, so how are they making any money from this? It can't be all out of love....

It looks kind of cool and I'd like to try it out but I have serious misgivings since the scripts doing the real work are on a remote server so I have no way to DEFINITIVELY know that all scripts are 100% benign since I can't look at the code that is interfacing with my cart's admin section!! We are pretty large and have a lot of sensitive data that could possibly be "harvested" for other uses.

I keep coming back to these questions every time I see this thread. And this statement from the Apsona's site FAQ:
"The ShopAdmin system works entirely within the context of your shopping cart application. It does not cause any security risks." is pretty vague and doesn't inspire confidence since it gives no specific details about how it interacts with your cart, and of course, since the scripts are hosted remotely there is NO WAY TO VERIFY THIS!! Plus, it DOESN'T work "entirely within the context of your shopping cart application" since it's using scripts that are remotely hosted, sorry to sound like a broken record and all that....but

Why not release this to be hosted on the individual's server with open source - non-obfuscated- code?? What do you, Apsona, have to gain by hosting this on your servers and forcing people to create an account before they can use it?? What am I missing here? Am I alone in thinking these things?? Does anyone agree with this? Or am I just being paranoid about letting an unvetted script full access to my data?

I love the mod, but yes more info about the company and their intentions would be nice.

I think Apsona is keeping control of it so that it will rise in value. The more shops it services the more valuable it becomes.
If that is the case then one day Apsona will be up for sale, or it may decide to charge for the service.

[rufusclc]

Hi Guys:
another question -
is there a way I can import via CSV or Excel to several dozen products' several attributes at one time? The site seems to indicate importing 1 products' attributes at a time!
Rufusclc

[kelvyn]

Is anyone else finding that on a store with > 1000 products and 5 attributes per product, that when going into the "Products" section of Apsona, it hangs the DB when filtering by product name?
Totally maxes my memory out.

[apsona]

Hi Guys:
another question -
is there a way I can import via CSV or Excel to several dozen products' several attributes at one time? The site seems to indicate importing 1 products' attributes at a time!
Rufusclc

That's not the intent of the example on the website. There is no reason why you can't import the attributes of a thousand products in one batch. Why do you ask - are you seeing any anomalies? If so, please let us know.

Thanks.

[apsona]

Is anyone else finding that on a store with > 1000 products and 5 attributes per product, that when going into the "Products" section of Apsona, it hangs the DB when filtering by product name?
Totally maxes my memory out.

Does this happen when you put in a name into the "search" box at the top, and click search? Or when you choose just "product name" in the "More options" area? Or both? (I would guess it happens in the first case, because by default it looks for matches in three fields, name, description and model - you can see the check boxes underneath the "Search" button).

[apsona]

lankeeyankee - Thanks for your comments. It is easy to verify what ShopAdmin is doing. First, you can look at the PHP code, which is clear text. Second, you can open up Firebug in Firefox (or HttpFox or HttpWatch or your tool of choice) and watch the traffic from your browser. You will see that there are two servers to which traffic flows: Your own server and shopadmin-svc.apsona.com. If you open up the packets that flow to the latter server, you will see that the only information it contains is logging data indicating what table was accessed and what operation was performed. It will not contain any data from your database. We use this logging data to improve the performance of our software, and this fact is stated in our terms of service and elsewhere on our website.

Hope this helps.

[rufusclc]

Re: uploading dozens of attributes at one tiome from a file
Simple and honest answer - I simply cant seem to work it out -
is there a tutorial or cheat sheet that would cover this;
or can you give me some hints and tips
Rufusclc