Easy Populate 1.2.5.4 support

[Jeff G]

1.2.5.5 is the latest version right? Just asking cuz it says last updated Dec 01 2006.

Also, are questions/concerns regarding modhole's easy populate advanced handled here? Or are most people using 1.2.5.5 here?

Thanks!

The "Latest" version is pretty old. The author no longer updates and seems to have abandoned the mod. It's a great mod and many people use it and try to help others.

Advanced is not supported here. That appears to be a total re-write and is supported through the authors website. I hope its imporved, but last time I looked it was taking him weeks to respond there.

[rickiesdiscount]

EP does nothing with encoding of any sort.

Did you look at the file using a simple editor such as notepad? A tab delimited file should look fine in Notepad except for column not lining up. You should be able to read everything.

You mention a new computer. Did your old PC use Office 2007? 07 uses totally new file formats vs. any prior version.

Yes i used 2007 on my old computer...that is what it doesn't make sense it is really weird..

[phazei]

New: CSV Easy Populate... heh.

OMG, I went through the code easypopulate.php and it's horrible. And judging from langers comments, he wasn't a very experienced programmer at the time. Although I've never seen the code for EPA3, so he could have got better.

Anyway, I haven't even used it yet really, I was just really bored tonight and couldn't sleep. So I rewrote a lot of the Download EP, Create EP, and Upload EP File code. Mainly in relation to file types. It now creates normal CSV files and accepts them. I was looking at the tab deliminated text files, and couldn't stand them.

Also, because of those text files, there is a TON of really convoluted code that is not necessary. I was able to replace some pages by just a couple lines of code.

So if you would prefer to use CSVs, then this is just what you need. There are options at the top of the file for how you want to deliminate and enclose the lines.

One thing I did not do was mess with (update) that split file feature, so it will NOT work. That code was much to sloppy to take the time to understand. Though I did add

set_time_limit(1200);
ini_set('max_input_time','1200'); 

to the top of the file so that should be good enough for larger files.

One nice thing is that retarded EOREOR is completely gone and totally unnecessary. It would actually break it now.


If you just replace the easypopulate.php file in the admin folder with the attached csv one, it will be updated.

Note: your old product backups won't work, but you can export new ones with the csv easypopulate that should work just fine.

EDIT: Almost forgot, this will ONLY work with PHP > v5.1

[swamyg1]

How realistic is adding Meta tags support for the Free easy populate version. I know it's in advanced, but I am hearing about a lot of problems with that version.

If I could just add it to 1.2.5.5 I would be all set!

[chadderuski]

OMG, I went through the code easypopulate.php and it's horrible. And judging from langers comments, he wasn't a very experienced programmer at the time. Although I've never seen the code for EPA3, so he could have got better.

Anyway, I haven't even used it yet really, I was just really bored tonight and couldn't sleep. So I rewrote a lot of the Download EP, Create EP, and Upload EP File code. Mainly in relation to file types. It now creates normal CSV files and accepts them. I was looking at the tab deliminated text files, and couldn't stand them.

Also, because of those text files, there is a TON of really convoluted code that is not necessary. I was able to replace some pages by just a couple lines of code.

So if you would prefer to use CSVs, then this is just what you need. There are options at the top of the file for how you want to deliminate and enclose the lines.

One thing I did not do was mess with (update) that split file feature, so it will NOT work. That code was much to sloppy to take the time to understand.

One nice thing is that retarded EOREOR is completely gone and totally unnecessary. It would actually break it now.

Phazei! I could not agree with you more. But if you think langer's free version is bad, go take a look at OSC's!

I also did some editing of this mod (a few pages back) to add quantity discounts... something that's be sorely missing. And like you, I started hacking out whole sections of useless code. I know some people have successfully used the auto splitting feature, but personally I think this code can be removed in favor of better data management.

I'm looking forward to the 1.4 wrap up and also 2.0. The database changes will necessitate a rewrite of this mod.

One open question: Are there any drawback/advantages to CVS over Tab delimited? Thinking foreign character set support, punctuation, etc...

-cj

[phazei]

One open question: Are there any drawback/advantages to CVS over Tab delimited? Thinking foreign character set support, punctuation, etc...

-cj

It does support all punctuation. You should be able to use any characters you want, including returns and tabs and quotes. Nothing is converted to <br> in the description. I did that because ZenCart has a textarea for the description field.


A couple details on csv:
Usually everything is separated by a comma. Encapsulation (quotes) is usually only required when a special character is used, such as a separating or encapsulation character.

A line containing the following items:
entery one
second, item

"i am" quoted"
123.32


Would look like this:
entery one,"second, item",,"""i am"" quoted""",123.32

Quotes are doubled up if used and surrounded by quotes.

As long as the files are opened in a spreadsheet editor that will save as CSV, it should all be taken care of. That's just how it would look like if you opened it with notepad.

For the special case of froogle, I just have it check if it's froogle, if so, change delimination to "\t" (tab) and encapsulation to " " (space). The spaces won't interfere with anything, the php csv function just doesn't allow no character listed for encapsulation.


I was also thinking about the auto splitting feature and its purpose. Last night I had been up for a while so hadn't realized this. I was thinking the splitting feature was to prevent upload timeouts, but if that was the case, it would timeout before it even finished uploading the original file to split. That's why I added the max_input_time change at the beginning. But that wasn't the purpose at all. And ini_set might not work for everyone.

It was to prevent script timeouts, which is really simple to get around. It's really laughable that so much programing went into that when all the original programmer needed to go was add the set_time_limit. WOW.

So in this attached version, I removed everything that has to do with the splitting, which is like 4 pages of code.

Another note: if you see a tiny little box with a "?" in it in Excel next to your line feeds, it's ok. Linefeeds saved from the description field use \r\n, but excel only expects only \n. So it shows the \r as a square.

[phazei]

MetaTag support: products only.

For categories won't be coming.

I'm just really OCD and ADD, I need to get back to work...

I also rewrote lots of the sql statements and optimized them a bit.

Also noticed an issue where Excel changes the timestamp from a SQL to the native windows setting. I added some code so the timestamp can be in just about any format. Even "January 15th, last year" should work, heh.



Note: i deleted csv v1&v2

[phazei]

Fixed a line for the date function for the specials date items

[swamyg1]

WOWEEE! Meta tag support too! Phazei you totally rock. You are doing so many people a great services, hats off to you!!!

[swamyg1]

Actually, my .csv file is not uploading propertly. I get no error message, just no status of anything... and products don't upload.

Any ideas what could be causing this?

This is what I get:

Upload Results

File uploaded.
Temporary filename: /Applications/MAMP/tmp/php/phpjQuYHW
User filename: Full-EP2009Jan04-1806 copy.txt
Size: 22527

Upload Complete