Product Type Book (by moku)

[inmac]

hello,

I'm getting the following error when applying a the patch for version 1.37.

1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'id'=>'1', 'text'=>'True'), array('id'=>'0', 'text'=>'False')), '
in:
[INSERT INTO product_type_layout (configuration_title, configuration_key, configuration_value, configuration_description, product_type_id, sort_order, set_function, date_added) VALUES ('Enable the Book Search', 'SEARCH_PRODUCT_BOOK_ENABLED', '1', 'Add the books to the search engine 0= off 1= on', '7', '0', 'zen_cfg_select_drop_down(array(array('id'=>'1', 'text'=>'True'), array('id'=>'0', 'text'=>'False')), ', now());]
If you were entering information, press the BACK button in your browser and re-check the information you had entered to be sure you left no blank fields.
Can someone tell me what I need to do to fix this.

inmac

[bearaman]

Hi Paul (Hareslade),
Would it be possible for you to post what tables get created and what new fields get created by your fine mod?
I'm trying to use Easy Populate Advanced to upload a pile of book data and this info would be very handy.
Thanks for a great mod!
Bearaman

[hareslade]

inmac, sorry I didn't get notication from the forum innards that you posted,
that section
'INSERT INTO product_type_layout '
is only inserting a switch for book search, in admin | edit layout for books..

In general, you can take out a specific entry from the sql in the patch, the text can be edited with notepad. Since its an upgrade sql, if the config table entry is already in your database, it would give an sql error.

Since the patch might have complete the items 'up to' where its errorred, then you just try applying the remainder of the patch, just after the line it errored at. Just do a zc backup using their add-on, before going too far! In fact, backing up the db before doing any sort of upgrade is essntial..

its essential really, to know about phpmyadmin. in your site control panel, because you can search for an entry e.g 'SEARCH_PRODUCT_BOOK_ENABLED' in the database, which if you find it, means you don't need that bit of the patch!

Haven't got space here obviously to explain it all, but using phpmyadmin is very useful for checking if an sql errored. But don't apply the patches designed for zencart patch page, in phpmyadmin, because the zc patches don't have the table prefix in the sql. The zc add on patches only work inside zencart.

[Kim]

Please add the contrib to the downloads section. Thanks.

[hareslade]

bearaman
there are a couple of word docs in folder 5_other_stuff in the book fileset, which roughly tell you the extra fields. Examining the add-on sql will tell you the exact tables created new for book product. there are quite a few...

To be honest, I never continued trying to get an auto-upload system working, the time to design it meant my 200 books could have been put in manually! (which they were..)

One of the problems is, the authors are kept in a specific table, so if you upload a book, you need to add the author to the authors table first, (as you would in admin)... then upload the rest of a books data, .. but you need to know the i.d that the new author got, (or search it) **before** you can link the rest of the new book data to it.

So its not just a case of uploading data.. I think it needs a bespoke php system to do it, which takes the book data in, processes it in the website, doing the separate table updates in a sequence. Thats vastly different from dumping a set of 'ordinary' zencart product data into single table or two.

Anyone want to spend 6 weeks programming php?
But do let us know how you get on with existing methods..

[hareslade]

Thanks Kim,

If you say please, I must do it.. will do..

Only thing is, I'm unable currently to give the support it really needs, in terms of coding time..

I did discuss with a few others about wiki, forum, or project creation for book... any suggestions in context of zencart? I don't want to have to admin a project as well!

[chinesebks4children]

Hello,

Thank you for working on this product type. We are selling books and this looks like the ideal way for us to present the special info about books on our site (using 1.3.8a).

On to my questions:
First, I rather circuitously found the link by explicitly putting this in my browser:

http://www.jphuk.co.uk/zc125/downloa...LANGS_ISS1.zip

It appears that there is no link to this on the homepage of your site

Next, I could not open this Zip files (using winxp sp2, built in extraction) b/c it asked for a password on some of the files.

Last, it appears that this will not work (or only partially) with EZ populate as I saw in another post. If it does work partially, what fields are used in the standard zc database and what are not? I figure if I only use the standard zc fields then maybe I can still use EZ Pop?

Thanks!
Eli

[hareslade]

hi! chinesebks4children
I forgot to do the formal entry in my website for the 1.3.8 book version! I was waiting for all those beta testers to decide if it works ok..

Note I only do the multilanguage version now.. it will run in single language..

Try this page for the add-ons link
http://www.jphuk.co.uk/zc/index.php?...roducts_id=490
Thats issue 2, almost identical to issue 1.

Some people do get password request for opening my zips, maybe its the xp internal unzipper. I used powerzip to zip up. There is always an extra empty file inside of the unzipped file, don't worry about it. There is no password protection.

The EZ populate I reckon would only work on the 'top level' book data, that is, Title, description, ISBN, etc see the link texts. All the rest of book data is in an extra table, and the authors and so on are difficult to upload by EZ-style add-ons.

Advise if the zip still gives trouble. btw I haven't fixed the minor bugs with search sideboxes, thats a todo..

[chinesebks4children]

thank you so much for your answers. I will try it tonight, must be about 6am where you are now. (btw I have some family in wales, need to go there someday)

regards...

p.s. link to site is www.chinesebooksforchildren.com/index.php , not quite ready yet but getting there...

[MikeFarrant]

Hareslade,
I'm really new to zencart and php so the learning curve for me is pretty steep (I'm a VB.NET developer). Having said that, your work on this book product type has been really helpful with my project.
I'm working with the zencart 1.3.8a and v4 of the book product type.
Everything is hanging together fairly well and I've spent the day today working on getting easypopulate to start adding and deleting correctly (still got most of the extra tables to do!!)
I've just taken a little breather and decided to try and put some authors in manually... but alas I've found that I cannot...
The SQL tables are being updated but the name and nickname fields are just not being populated? I've scanned through this thread but not found anyone else with this problem. Any ideas?

Thanks

Mike