Importing XML Feeds Advice Needed

[SteveCollins]

Hi,

One of my suppliers is offer a live product feed using XML. Is this something that can be easily implemnented with the latest version of zencart?

As they are selling approximately 35000 products this would be very useful to me as I would not need to manually check how much stock they carry for any item as it should automatically update from their database.

Any advice, warnings or any other info would be very useful.

many thanks in advance for any replies.

[enigmabomb]

Yes, I am doing it every day.

Use php 5 and lookup SimpleXML. From there, you can parse the incoming information and add the product, products description, and manufacturer info.

Josh

[SteveCollins]

Thank you very much for your assistance. Your help is very appreciated. One other thing though, does this allow for products to be uploaded manually that are not from my supplier. For example if I have multiple suppliers that I hold stock from as well as this supplier who I have dropship the items?

[enigmabomb]

Just put it in the same format. CSV owns me!

[SteveCollins]

Thanks very much Josh. I take it I have to download this from somewhere. Is it a dificult task to install and get up and running?

[enigmabomb]

How well do you know PHP and MySQL? The intensive part here is making sure:

No Duplicates
Update changed ones
Add New Ones
Delete Old Ones


Youll have to write the majority of this from scratch.

zen_remove_product will help.

As for adding, check out easy populate for some example code.

[enigmabomb]

Also, feel free to PM me any questions you might have. There are some intricacies Ive had to deal with. Namely, to use the zen functions, you have to recreate the db object in php5.2

if (!is_object($db)) {
//PHP 5.2.0 bug workaround ...
$db = new queryFactory();
$db->connect("localhost", "root", "root", "bernie_chcart", USE_PCONNECT, false);
}
//zen_remove_product($idarray['products_id']);

[SteveCollins]

I am not that familiar with PHP in the sense that I could not program a page without major research first. MySQL is something that I know enough to get by on.

Most of my ability is more to do with changing around what is already there rather than starting from scratch.

I appreciate the offer of PMing you. I will do a little research first so that I ca familiarise myself with some of this stuff. That way I do not waste your time asking silly questions. Many thanks for all of your answers. I will be in contact soon via PM.

[mate2007]

Hi Steve

Can you give me a link to the xml feed you want to import, its possable i might be able to help you out.

Drop me a pm if you like

Regards

Mate2007

[oavs]

Hi

I have the similar question to using datafeeds. Can anyone help where I should be starting please ?

My drop ship supplier provides daily inventory feed in CSV format.

they provide me with links such as following but I have no idea how to use the CVS file with zencart.
http://www.dropship-wholesaler.com/d...s/products.csv
http://www.dropship-wholesaler.com/d...es/options.csv

Please help.