Importing from an external dropship site

I was wondering if anyone could point me in te right direction.

I use a dropship site which states on their page this:

*Product Population

If you have just installed one of the popular shopping cart software packages, you can use the following links to download the basic data needed to load our products into your databases. We've mapped our products onto the basic tables, which should give you enough information to start your site going. Initially we'll be covering OSCommerce, Zen Cart and XCart but over time we'll add more applications to ensure we can help anyone setting up their site for the first time.*

Now I have d/l these links and they are in .csv format but I am unsure where I have to put them now to get them on my shop or am I reading it wrong and they don't actually go on a database it is just information for me to use.

Sorry for being a bit dumb today.:frusty:

You'll need to use phpmyadmin (or another database manager) to load the csv files into the database. Phpmyadmin is usually available on your hosting control panel

Is it possible then to import in PHPMyadmin a file edited in excel which has only 2 columns (the id & stock level) to update a table? And How??:frusty: Thank u!

Yes, it is possible to do with a little work on the Excel file.
Assume you have the product ID in column A, and the stock level in column B. I'll assume you have column titles in the first row, and the first data fields are in row 2.
In the second row of column C, enter this formula:

=CONCATENATE("UPDATE TABLE products SET products_quantity = ",B2," WHERE products_id = ",A2,";")

Then copy that formula and paste it into the rest of the column C rows.

Now you can just select the whole of column C, and either paste it into your Admin > Tools > Install SQL Patches page, or paste it into a blank text file that you can then import into either phpmyadmin or the Admin > Install SQL Patches page.

Note: if you have a prefix on your tables and plan to import the file via phpmyadmin, you will need to add the prefix into that formula in Excel. If you plan to use the Admin SQL patch page, do NOT add the table prefix, as it gets added automatically by the cart.

hi
this is something i was looking for long time.i have v- products_model and v_products_quantity.can i update quantity of stock with that formula?
thanks in advance for your help

you should be able to do it in exactly the same fashion - exchanging products_model for products_id in the formula.
However - no guarantees - **try it on a test database/store first **and make a backup of your live store database before running the sql script there.

Perfect.yes its working .thank you very much

Thank you Bunyip:smile:

If you are able to grab your supplier's product data as a csv file or even a MS Excel spreadsheet, the easiest way to load it into your database is to use EasyPopulate.

If you are using Zencart version 1.3.xxx (including 1.3.8a) then the version of EP you need is 1.2.5.4 available from Langer's Modhole (https://www.modhole.com - follow links to Easy Populate Standard).

If your supplier provides a list of image url's, the easiest way to get all the images is to use wget. This program automatically downloads all the images from the remote site to your hard drive.

Your supplier's spreadsheet is likely to have a column that lists the paths to the images - something like:

http://www.supplier.com/images/1234567.jpg
http://www.supplier.com/images/2345678.jpg
http://www.supplier.com/images/3456789.jpg

Copy this column and paste it into a plain text editor (notepad++), then save it as a .txt file .

Save this file in the root (c:) of your hard drive.

(We used this last night to grab over 4000 images - took 30 minutes).

Get wget from:-

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?groupname=gnuwin32&filename=wget-1.11.4-1-setup.exe&use_mirror=garr

install it

open a cmd prompt e.g. start | run | type: cmd
in the command prompt type cd.. press enter

type this again till you get to just the c:

(The program may be located in a BIN folder, and if so, the likely path will be: C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin. At the c: prompt, type cd Program Files\GnuWin32\bin)

When you reach this location...

type wget -i c:\textfile.txt (replace textfile.txt with the name of the textfile you created)

let it run till it downloads all your images. (They will be located in the bin folder, so later you can move them to another folder).

you will now have a folder with all the images as they were on the remote server.

You can then FTP the images to your own server.

Is there a manual anywhere that explains what fields Zen Cart requires for a product or category import?

I've a CSV file from a drop shipping supplier and need to bring this into my cart, through whatever method, but need to make sure that the fields tally.

Thanks

djcr:

Is there a manual anywhere that explains what fields Zen Cart requires for a product or category import?

I've a CSV file from a drop shipping supplier and need to bring this into my cart, through whatever method, but need to make sure that the fields tally.

Thanks

For people who struggle with SQL commands and queries, Easy Populate is the most practical way to upload and administer product information in your zenshop.

See above for links to Easy Populate module.

My Easy Populate tutorial is here:
http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Easy_Populate

Hi
i have 16000 products to import and every day that changes too.so i have to update them.is it any easy way to change the Column Headings in excel,stead of all copy and past .
thanks

mm99:

Hi
i have 16000 products to import and every day that changes too.so i have to update them.is it any easy way to change the Column Headings in excel,stead of all copy and past .
thanks

No...

(But doing this manually only takes a couple of minutes...)

yes you are right .specially for updating price and quantity .but my drop ship site ,almost add some new product everyday.maybe i have to look for some program to compare and sync excel files.
thank you for reply

schoolboy:

If you are able to grab your supplier's product data as a csv file or even a MS Excel spreadsheet, the easiest way to load it into your database is to use EasyPopulate.

If you are using Zencart version 1.3.xxx (including 1.3.8a) then the version of EP you need is 1.2.5.4 available from Langer's Modhole (https://www.modhole.com - follow links to Easy Populate Standard).

If your supplier provides a list of image url's, the easiest way to get all the images is to use wget. This program automatically downloads all the images from the remote site to your hard drive.

Your supplier's spreadsheet is likely to have a column that lists the paths to the images - something like:

http://www.supplier.com/images/1234567.jpg
http://www.supplier.com/images/2345678.jpg
http://www.supplier.com/images/3456789.jpg

Copy this column and paste it into a plain text editor (notepad++), then save it as a .txt file .

Save this file in the root (c:) of your hard drive.

(We used this last night to grab over 4000 images - took 30 minutes).

Get wget from:-

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?groupname=gnuwin32&filename=wget-1.11.4-1-setup.exe&use_mirror=garr

install it

open a cmd prompt e.g. start | run | type: cmd
in the command prompt type cd.. press enter

type this again till you get to just the c:

(The program may be located in a BIN folder, and if so, the likely path will be: C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin. At the c: prompt, type cd Program Files\GnuWin32\bin)

When you reach this location...

type wget -i c:\textfile.txt (replace textfile.txt with the name of the textfile you created)

let it run till it downloads all your images. (They will be located in the bin folder, so later you can move them to another folder).

you will now have a folder with all the images as they were on the remote server.

You can then FTP the images to your own server.

question, i tried this and it said it downloaded my pictures, but i cant find them, i did exactly like you wrote and looked in bin folder, ??:blink:

jgg1974:

question, i tried this and it said it downloaded my pictures, but i cant find them, i did exactly like you wrote and looked in bin folder, ??:blink:

ANY!? :shocking:

If you know what one of the images is called, use the search function in windows to locate it, or use FF at the command prompt.

I did the search but no luck finding the image, also can you tell me what is FF?

thanks

hi
thanks for the useful information on the scraping tool schoolboy.

I also cant find the images - I looked in the .bin file and there are about 4.dll files. one file is about 1,150kb which might be the one holding the images but i cant seem to open it.

Ive done a search for the images and windows just points me to the datafeed from which i pulled the urls from.

ANy idea

thanks

I use the wget function regularly, and I follow the procedure I outlined. The images are always in my bin folder

(dos-path c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin )

On your computer, go to START button and open command screen (cmd).

when in DOS mode, change directories until you have the following:

c:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin >

Then at the command prompt, type DIR, then hit [Enter] key.