EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

[chadderuski]

is there a way to move products from one category to the other ? I don't want to have
double items in the catalog and I haven't figure out if there is way to do so ?

There is currently no built-in support to achieve this. If you add the product with a new category, it will get added as a linked product.

Also note that because of the way the EP4 works, there is no support for DUPLICATE products (i.e. two products with the same model number) or Products missing a Model number...

Having said that, it may be possible to do, but would have wait unfil after I finished attributes.

So you will need to do this from within the admin.

WORK-AROUND: If you are not running a store with order history, you could perform a "move" by creating your sheet with the products listed first with status "9" (delete) and then again below with the new category with status 1. Remember, this will be a "new" product and products_id in the products table will be different. I don't know how this would affect orders, order history, or other mods that may use the products_id instead of the products_model. For a new installation this should be fine. However, you will need to re-upload the images for these files as the zencart function for deleting a product also deletes the associated image if not used by another product.

[chadderuski]

Update v.4.0.18 - Beta 1-27-2012 Posted on Github

This update fixes several issues with UTF8 multi-byte characters, and adds a new configuration variable for dealing with "curly quotes" (aka smart quotes), En-Dash, Em-Dash and the Ellipsis (three dots like ...). Also added support for products_msrp mod.

To Update:
1. First make note of your settings under Configuration -> Easy Populate 4
2. Uploading the new files to your website's admin folder maintaining directory structure
3. Navigate to Tools -> Easy Populate 4 and select "Un-Install EP4" (this will remove the configuration variables)
4. You will now have 2 warnings at the top. Click the "[ here ]" to install new configuration variables.
5. Navigate to Configuration -> Easy Populate 4. At the bottom is a new setting: Convert Curly Quotes, etc. Choose one of the following:

0 = No Change (will not convert your characters)
1 = Replace with Basic Characters (will replace a curly quote with simple quote, etc.)
2 = Replace with HTML (will replace with HTML equivalants)

As always, please be sure to backup your data before doing imports. Test first with just a couple rows of data.

I'm also looking for sample data for Greek, Russian, Simplified Chinese, etc. or people that can test and verify these language are being handles correctly.

NOTE: I've made every effort to correctly support zen 1.5's UTF-8 character set. This should not affect 1.38/39 users who have not converted to UTF-8. If you find an issue, please post sample data (I only need a few lines showing the problem), and specify which version of zencart you are using, and the character set (UTF-8 vs ISSO-8859-1) you are using on your website. If you have other languages installed, also include those.

When installing multiple languages, it's best to leave english as the first installed language. Remember, the 1, 2, 3, etc. under Installed Languages refers to THAT language.
Example: 1=english, 2=spanish, 3=dutch, then you will have v_products_name_1, v_products_name_2 and v_products_name_3... one for each language.

This also applies to v_categories_names_1, etc. You MUST include v_categories_names_1 (the lowest defined language), but the others are optional - they will default to the first defined language. v_categories_names_1 is very important if you plan to support categories in multiple languages as all category matching and creation is based on this column.

Thanks again to everyone who is testing and providing feedback!

... I'm back to the attribute grind stone ...

[stepgr]

Having said that, it may be possible to do, but would have wait unfil after I finished attributes.

So you will need to do this from within the admin.

WORK-AROUND: If you are not running a store with order history, you could perform a "move" by creating your sheet with the products listed first with status "9" (delete) and then again below with the new category with status 1. Remember, this will be a "new" product and products_id in the products table will be different. I don't know how this would affect orders, order history, or other mods that may use the products_id instead of the products_model. For a new installation this should be fine. However, you will need to re-upload the images for these files as the zencart function for deleting a product also deletes the associated image if not used by another product.

Thanks anyway Chadd. The workaround you provide is also good
for a new installation so it's OK by me anyway!

[VideoStan]

This is a great improvement for many users whose uploads fail for all those "odd" reasons!

... I'm back to the attribute grind stone ...

Go Chadd go!

[shop4costumes]

Chadd
Thanks so much for this - it's such an improvement.
Can't wait for the attributes to work.

Sarah
www.shop4costumes.co.uk

[shop4costumes]

In my excitement I forgot to actually type what I intended to....we have come across something strange which may be related to the mod, or it could be a problem with our server.

Our test site is on a separate server to the live site, and the hosting co strangles the processing time.
I exported the data from our live site. No problem. File created. (Different hosting co with more bandwidth).

I wanted to import this to our test site. Tried to import but timed out.

To get around this I split the files - that worked fine - but then when I tried importing one of the split files it still timed out. The file size doubled. when I download the now larger split file it has duplicate entries - so rather than 2000 it now has 4000.
So I deleted all EP files and then changed the no of items to 500.

My original file then split to 8, I imported the first file witha file size of 389k. It still timed out, but then the size of every one of my split files doubles. I checked the file sizes on the server too.

When I look at the content all items seem to have duplicated.

If I try again, same happens again. and all records duplicate again.

The csv files just increase in size each time.
Each time they appear to add the records again, so after 2 failures each file contains 3 identical lines of data for each item.

There is clearly an issue with the server which is why we are only keeping our test site on it. But the behaviour may be something you need to be aware of.

I'm sorry I'm not a techie so dont know if that's enough to help or not. And it may be nothing to do with your mod.

Thanks
Sarah
www.shop4costumes.co.uk

[shop4costumes]

Hi, me again, I really dont know if the problem above was due to to EP4 or to due to our hosting co.
I got around this problem by importing my original database into the test site. Happy to try testing any new developments but I will need to do it on the live site.
Thanks again
Sarah
www.shop4costumes.co.uk

[chadderuski]

Hi, me again, I really dont know if the problem above was due to to EP4 or to due to our hosting co.
I got around this problem by importing my original database into the test site. Happy to try testing any new developments but I will need to do it on the live site.
Thanks again
Sarah
www.shop4costumes.co.uk

Hi Sara,

Seems you've found a bug!

When you run the split the FIRST time, and the number of records set in configuration is LESS then the number to split on, it duplicates the file. This is okay, and expected behavior.

However, if you then run SPLIT on the original file AGAIN, the target split file is being APPENDED instead of being OVERWRITTEN. My bad!

The FIRST time you SPLIT will be okay. But you'll need to delete the split files before attempting to split again. How many records do you have in your original data file? Try setting your split value to half this number.

To help with timeout, you can also set your "Script Execution Time" to something larger than 60 ... but I don't think that will help if your testing server is that strangling.

I'll try to get this fixed right away! Very sorry for the inconvenience!

-chadd

[chadderuski]

FILE SPLITTING BUG

To fix open /admin/easypopulate_4_split.php

On line 34 change:

        $split_handle = fopen($split_location, "a") or die("can't create split file"); 

to:

        $split_handle = fopen($split_location, "w") or die("can't create split file"); 

Thank you Sara for making me aware of this!
-chadd

[chadderuski]

Github has been updated with this latest fix for file splitting: Easy Populate 4.0.19 - Beta 1-28-2012