EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

[mc12345678]

Okay, I'm brand new to Zen Cart, and wanted to post a thank you to everyone that has contributed to this plugin because it worked perfectly for me!!

I installed Zen Cart(1.5.1) on Host Gator shared hosting using the script that they provided, so it's the only site on my server at this point.

I had tried a different version of EP that claimed to offer csv support, as well as another one that claimed to work with native Excel files. Neither worked out for me.

I found that with this plugin, I did end up using Open Office (and was surprised to find it's not Apache Open Office) to edit the files as suggested.

Again, thank you, and good luck to anyone else struggling with this plugin - it's worth it!

Welcome to ZC, glad to hear that you've gotten this far, though using the install script, you've missed out on a lot of the learning opportunities of managing ZC. Hopefully, you'll take the time in the near future to manually upgrade to the latest ZC version, which can be done while your current store remains functional/operational. But I digress.

For some reason, cause yet to be determined the export of a char(1) value of a plus, is being translated to a 0 on export. We haven't discussed versions of software yet, the identification of the various charsets (includes/configure.php, admin/includes/configure.php, database tables and one other place I can't remember), nor the status of internal character encoding (top right in the Easy Populate 4 screen).

Anyways, the majority of the issues are in the usage of the plugin, not the plugin itself, although this current issue appears to be a bit of an anamoly to the local setup, not so much the program itself.

Thinking of beginning a new thread with the details of the code compressed down to the applicable actions, when I create it, I'll post the link here. Jenovee, if you wouldn't mind following and subscribing to it, maybe this can be resolved.

[propster]

Hi, I have installed Ep4 v4.0.28 on a local machine test site with zc1.5.4 and SBA 1.5.4. Everything seems to be working so far. I have a couple of problems/questions though. Do I need to add the custom id field in the EP4 configuration options? If I upload the file with this field empty I get an error (check for tabs in fields) and if there is data in this field it all works fine. It is showing in the downloaded files without being added in the configuration. Secondly my product display is now showing the custom id in the quantity box. Any ideas as to how to stop this from showing.

[mc12345678]

Hi, I have installed Ep4 v4.0.28 on a local machine test site with zc1.5.4 and SBA 1.5.4. Everything seems to be working so far. I have a couple of problems/questions though. Do I need to add the custom id field in the EP4 configuration options? If I upload the file with this field empty I get an error (check for tabs in fields) and if there is data in this field it all works fine. It is showing in the downloaded files without being added in the configuration. Secondly my product display is now showing the custom id in the quantity box. Any ideas as to how to stop this from showing.

Still a few "variables" in the mix... Although the few branches that are off of the potteryhouse revised version of SBA would not impact the functionality/interaction of EP4 with SBA, the version does modify how the information is displayed.

To bring things home a little, the customid that is a part of the potteryhouse version of SBA should not need to be added to the configuration->EP4->custom fields menu option and in fact would not provide anything of benefit because custom fields area is a products table field not associated with other tables. SBA creates a products_with_attributes_stock table. In that table is customid. When using the detailed SBA export/import (sba-detailed-ep is the filename prefix), effectively this additional feature expects that the SBA variants (row of data) already exist and that only the products_id, stock_attributes, quantity, sort, and in this case the customid (as customid is included with SBA 1.5.4) fields are updated... This additional feature remains limited and follows the development of SBA, meaning that some of the additionally desired actions must wait a little to ensure that the feature in SBA is to remain and/or how it is to be used moving forwards.

Then there is the sba-stock-ep prefix named file, which is only for stock tracking purposes. So, the current detailed SBA attributes (described in the README.txt of the download) is basically a stock tracking tool at this time, with the expectation that the SBA product variants would be setup through the database. (Of course EP4 could be used to create many of the aspects of the products, with going into the admin control panel to generate the variants, and then EP4 could be used to manage the quantities of the existing variants.)

I'm not sure about the issue of the customid showing in the quantities box, again there are a few variables at play. What does your actual import file look like? (A few lines of it anyways) What did the same line(s) (of model number data) look like before modification? What is the file name(s) involved? (at least the prefix, as these files are processed based on the beginning of the filename... There's only so much that can be done to help based on the information provided above in the original post, so please help identify all the details associated. The version numbers were a good start, but there is far more involved than versions.

[Jenovee]

Thinking of beginning a new thread with the details of the code compressed down to the applicable actions, when I create it, I'll post the link here. Jenovee, if you wouldn't mind following and subscribing to it, maybe this can be resolved.

Yes, I'll help in any way I can. I'm really curious as to what's causing this. Especially since, so far, it seems like I'm the only one with this issue. And also the only one with the item name being deleted.

[mc12345678]

Yes, I'll help in any way I can. I'm really curious as to what's causing this. Especially since, so far, it seems like I'm the only one with this issue. And also the only one with the item name being deleted.

Well there was one other that was experiencing a loss of names issue when the names column was removed from the import. So that aspect was similar but different.

[propster]

Ok Thanks for the quick reply. I am downloading SBA-Detailed-EP2015xxx. I try to re-import the file without opening it and get the following message. An SQL error has occurred. Please check input data for tabs within fields and delete these. If this error continues please forwrd your error log to the Easy Populate maintainer. I have attached the error log and a screen shot of my admin area.
I have solved the problem of the quantities box. It was a configuration option which needed to be edited.

[mc12345678]

Issue is that the code is/was written thinking that the customid was going to be a unique number... However, it is a string, so working on a change to accommodate in addition to a few other minor changes...

[mc12345678]

Issue is that the code is/was written thinking that the customid was going to be a unique number... However, it is a string, so working on a change to accommodate in addition to a few other minor changes...

Doesn't fix Jenovee's issue(s), but 4.0.29 has been pushed to: https://github.com/mc12345678/EasyPopulate-4.0

If I get a few to validate the new operation, then perhaps it can be merged into the main version.

Changes:
-Added support for products_map modification (Manufacturer's Advertised Price)
-Added MSRP export to areas where previously begun but not fully incorporated.
-Modified import of customid for SBA-detailed-attributes to treat as a string.
-Began incorporating language overrides, specifically with German as the first alternate language.
-Added support for the plugin dual pricing.

No changes were made to the configuration menu in this version. Upgrade from 4.0.28 should be by replacement of the files only.

[propster]

Doesn't fix Jenovee's issue(s), but 4.0.29 has been pushed to: https://github.com/mc12345678/EasyPopulate-4.0

If I get a few to validate the new operation, then perhaps it can be merged into the main version.

Changes:
-Added support for products_map modification (Manufacturer's Advertised Price)
-Added MSRP export to areas where previously begun but not fully incorporated.
-Modified import of customid for SBA-detailed-attributes to treat as a string.
-Began incorporating language overrides, specifically with German as the first alternate language.
-Added support for the plugin dual pricing.

No changes were made to the configuration menu in this version. Upgrade from 4.0.28 should be by replacement of the files only.

Thanks again for a very quick response. This is now working how I want. I have managed to download the SBA-Detailed file and re-import without errors. I have also changed quantities and re-imported without any problem. Thanks again for all your work.

[mc12345678]

Thanks again for a very quick response. This is now working how I want. I have managed to download the SBA-Detailed file and re-import without errors. I have also changed quantities and re-imported without any problem. Thanks again for all your work.

Glad to know that fix was successful, the stock tracking/updating aspect already properly treated the model# as a string. Next validation?