EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

Hasher:

Hi chadderuski

Just wondering if it is possible to add products with a download link . Or should I say a directory and file name and type . Mostly I work with PDF downloads . Which header names of columns would I be looking for . Or is it restricted to those column names in the export file.

Thanks Paul

I think you have to use attributes to do this. I have never done a download product myself. Perhaps someone else can chime in on this?

-chadd

Categories: I want to include some of my products in more than one category, usually done by linking a product I think. Can EP4 handle this ... if so how? (Many thanks for the mod, by the way, it's great to see this area being developed, it's certainly really important to us).

Hey Chad,

Me again...

How would I format the v_products_image field to look for an external URL?

I seem to recall doing this in an earlier version. I'm currently using 4.0.22.

We have run into a problem on one of our servers and I need to temporarily point to a different domain to pull product images, of which we have over 50k!

Keezee:

Hey Chad,

Me again...

How would I format the v_products_image field to look for an external URL?

I seem to recall doing this in an earlier version. I'm currently using 4.0.22.

We have run into a problem on one of our servers and I need to temporarily point to a different domain to pull product images, of which we have over 50k!

I couldn't find the post, you telling why you need this , why don't you use the product url (v_products_url) ???

Design75:

I couldn't find the post, you telling why you need this , why don't you use the product url (v_products_url) ???

I only want to pull the image from the URL, not any other product data.
Basically, I have a different and totally unrelated server that I am storing images on and I would like my product images to be pulled from there. It's temporary and needs to look as normal as possible.

Hi,

Sort of a newbie question but I can't seem to extract the answer from this thread.

I am trying to add some new, user defined product fields. I add the fields from zcadmin>config>EP 4 as per the instructions and they now show up in tools>EP 4 as field name: False.

Thats as far as I've gotten. When I download the "Complete Products" there are no new columns for the new fields. Also, I do not see columns for the "Custom Product Fields" which are also indicated as False. So, I guess my question is, how do you change these fields' status from False to True.

Using EP4.0.22

2ndMouse:

Categories: I want to include some of my products in more than one category, usually done by linking a product I think. Can EP4 handle this ... if so how? (Many thanks for the mod, by the way, it's great to see this area being developed, it's certainly really important to us).

Yes, you can do this...

What you would do is DUPLICATE the products spreadsheet entry, but only change the category.

Be sure to BACKUP YOUR DATABASE. And run a test with a single product. Test to see if you can have more than one link (you should be able to link as many times as you need, I just haven't tested this in recent memory).

-chadd

Keezee:

I only want to pull the image from the URL, not any other product data.
Basically, I have a different and totally unrelated server that I am storing images on and I would like my product images to be pulled from there. It's temporary and needs to look as normal as possible.

Hey Keezee!

Just changing your image location won't solve your problem as zencart assumes a local images folder.

check out this old thread:

http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?125120-Use-offsite-images

and here is a mod for external product images:

http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=1077

Hope that helps. I've never done this myself.

wacamatic:

Hi,

Sort of a newbie question but I can't seem to extract the answer from this thread.

I am trying to add some new, user defined product fields. I add the fields from zcadmin>config>EP 4 as per the instructions and they now show up in tools>EP 4 as field name: False.

Thats as far as I've gotten. When I download the "Complete Products" there are no new columns for the new fields. Also, I do not see columns for the "Custom Product Fields" which are also indicated as False. So, I guess my question is, how do you change these fields' status from False to True.

Using EP4.0.22

You are very close. You will also need to use phpMyAdmin from your websites control panel and add those fields to the products database. There are a number of threads on how to do this.

The reason you get "false" is because you haven't added the fields to the database yet.

-chadd

Thanks Chad. I'll search the thread

Warren

chadderuski:

Yes, you can do this...

What you would do is DUPLICATE the products spreadsheet entry, but only change the category.

Be sure to BACKUP YOUR DATABASE. And run a test with a single product. Test to see if you can have more than one link (you should be able to link as many times as you need, I just haven't tested this in recent memory).

-chadd

Thanks for getting back with this, have tried 1 item in 3 categories and it works absolutely fine. Now just have to write myself a little script to make the duplicates and insert the new cat's ... this should be excellent.

But another thing ... when I was using zen cart 1.3 and easy pop 1.2etc (last week) I always used to 'wipe the slate clean' with a mySQL patch (DELETE FROM Categories, etc from Dr Byte, I think) to clear all categories/records before uploading a 'new shop' from my database. How do I best do this now (and is it a good idea at all?). Once again, thanks for your help.

chadderuski:

Hi Serious,

No, this is not built into EP4 at this time. I'll have to see if it can be added. I have a couple of requests for this now.

In the mean time you should be able to use Numinix's google merchant feeder and pull the url's from the xml data.

-chaddOkay, I'm working on it.....
More stuff to learn.:)

Hoping someone can help me. I'm using ZC 1.5 and EP 4.0.22 - Beta 6-10-2012. I have successfully imported the products (sort of) and categories were entered manually. I am now trying to bring across all attributes. To do this, I entered all my attributes options and values manually and then add them to some products. I then did a detailed attribute export using EP. I then learnt a lot more than I used to know about excel and managed to get all the data in the right columns for all my attributes.

Finally imported back into ZC expecting some problems but to my surprise and delight it reported back that the import was successful and 2000ish entries had been updated... trouble is it lied right to my face. Nothing has been changed, either in Zen Cart or the database.

So, I've been trawling through this thread trying to find an answer and it appears I have done several things wrong:

1. I'm using excel not open office. So I installed open office. Unfortunately it keeps crashing on my fancy 4GHz i7, ssd, 16gb ram setup?!? I have Libre Office running OK if that's any help.

2)I somehow have introduced some whitespace to some of my Model fields. I will fix this but they are exactly the same in the attributes file so I dont see how this is an issue.

3. I'm not sure but was I supposed to do a basic import first... because I didnt. If so this is going to be a pain to get all the option values into one cell... Do i have to do this, any tips on making this happen?

4. I noticed my import export csv files are not the same. my exports have double quotes around all fields and I cannot for the life of me work out how to make excel do this. Libre office has an option to enclose text fields in double quotes but I cant get it to do it around all values. I tried entering them in the actual fields but excel then decides it wants to turn that into three sets of double quotes

5)What should I be doing with the v_products_attributes_id field. I tried looking at the last entry an incrementing from there but no joy.

Now, I realise I am probably going to have to start again. but if someone could help me out with some clear pointers so that the next time is the last time I have to do this I would be forever in your debt

Your help is greatly appreciated. Please see attributes CSV here http://pastebin.com/gsN6LvWm

WebweaverD:

Looks like you jumped in with both feet before checking how cold the water was! LOL!

Yes, you MUST use the BASIC attribute import FIRST. This is how you CREATE the attachment of an attribute set to a product. If your product has multiple attribute set (color, size, etc) then you will have a line for that product for each attribute set.

If you are having problems with OpenOffice, try to update your Java. I heard other people having issue with OO.
IMPORTANT: You CAN work in Excel, but you need to use OO to export your CSV. Other forms MAY work, but I can offer no guarantees.

Yes, the error reporting side of the Attribute import code is not fully mature.

Your normal work flow to attach attributes is:

1. create your BASIC import (respect file naming conventions!): this will attach your attribute names/values to your product id.

2. after you import your BASIC attribute file, EXPORT your DETAILED attribute file. The DETAIL file is one-to-one record based. So you do not use the DETAILED report to create new attributes, just set the micro-data on how that attributes works.

3. import your DETAILED file to update those particular settings.

hope this clarifies some things.
-chadd

Thanks for the tips and quick response Chad,

I'm gonna have another crack at this now. Is there a guide or wiki that I missed for this plugin? I found this http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Easy_Populate but it's referring to version 1.2.5.4 of EP and doesn't cover the advanced attributes import.

Thanks for the great plugin. All it needs now is a muppet proof guide.

WebweaverD:

Is there a guide or wiki that I missed for this plugin?
Not as extensive as you'd like, but it really is simple. In the main directive of the download, just follow the info in install.txt and readme.txt. Then come here for help.

Stan

Me again, Still having trouble.

So, I have trimmed all the model fields and started again. Once again products are all in the system just fine. I have then tried a basic attributes import. Again it has reported success but nothing has changed. This time I used open office (I updated Java as suggested - seems OK now. Thanks Chad) Text csv as export with comma delimiter and double quotes around text fileds (is this correct?)

issue 1) v_products_options_type is different in my advanced attribute export to my basic export. In the basic they are all set to 5, In advanced they are set to 5,3 or 2 - i have tried both ways and neither works.

issue2) Not sure if I'm supposed to have entered the attribute/name values prior to the basic import.

issue3) I had one v_products_options_values_name_1 of "Form, Colour, Patterns" and thought this may be an issue due to the comma separation of values so I changed this to "Form Colour Patterns" but still no joy.

I haven't tried the advanced attributes import yet since I cannot see any changes after the basic import, further more, when I look at mysql logs after the basic import, all I can see are select queries - no updates or inserts.

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong here. I'm starting to think SQL may be the way to go. Here is my basic attribute import csv http://pastebin.com/rjZF1VtM. I know this is a big dataset so I tried with the first 4 rows only and once again it reports success but nothing is changing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Please all ignore the above - My problem was not naming the files correctly, e.g. the files you import have to be called Attrib-Basic-EP_whateveryouwant.csv. This is clearly written in the readme. So we can put this one down to user error. 10 mins reading the readme or several hours guessing. I'll choose the first option in future. Thanks all for your help.

WebweaverD:

Please all ignore the above - My problem was not naming the files correctly, e.g. the files you import have to be called Attrib-Basic-EP_whateveryouwant.csv. This is clearly written in the readme. So we can put this one down to user error. 10 mins reading the readme or several hours guessing. I'll choose the first option in future. Thanks all for your help.

WebweavreD,

Yup. Gotta name the file correctly. So, what you were seeing was the core import code processing your attribute file as if it were standard import. Since NONE of the other columns other than the product id are read, it would say it processed the file basically doing nothing.

In my next patch, I'll put something ON SCREEN about this, or some kind on help. We'll see.

Also, do not put SPACES between your attribute options/names: "red,blue,green" is okay but: "red, blue, green" is not. I do not remember if I did a trim on those - I may not have going for performance.

Best to test and see.

Also, for your one's sanity, best to run your first import with a single line to verify your have everything done correctly. You DO NOT have to first create your attribute name/options.

ONE THING TO NOTE (also in the read me): Zencart will let you create to different attributes: COLOR and COLOR which will have different ID's, you CANNOT do this with EP4, each attribute name needs to be unique within it's defined set:

OFFSET_COLORS {cyan,magenta,yellow,black}
RGB_COLORS {red,green,blue}

One last thing: there is no delete function for attributes. If you need to delete a color option from a product, you have to do it from within the admin.

-chadd

Using Zen Cart 1.5.1 with "easy_populate_csv_for_zencart_v1.5.x_v1.2.5.7c"

I saved my csv files using Excel. The whole database got corrupted. I will download Open Office to try, to see if it works.

First row (titles) in "Full-EP2013Jan21-1111.csv" as follow:

v_products_model,v_products_image,v_products_name_1,v_products_description_1,v_products_url_1,v_specials_price,v_specials_last_modified,v_specials_expires_date,v_products_price,v_products_weight,v_last_modified,v_date_added,v_products_quantity,v_manufacturers_name,v_categories_name_1,v_categories_name_2,v_categories_name_3,v_categories_name_4,v_categories_name_5,v_categories_name_6,v_categories_name_7,v_tax_class_title,v_status,v_metatags_products_name_status,v_metatags_title_status,v_metatags_model_status,v_metatags_price_status,v_metatags_title_tagline_status,v_metatags_title_1,v_metatags_keywords_1,v_metatags_description_1

Second row (data) in "Full-EP2013Jan21-1111.csv" as follow:

P_001,"Item 1.jpg","Item 1","Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.",,,,,105,0,"2013-01-21 11:24:16","2012-12-27 13:57:00",99,"Barnes and Noble",CAT1,,,,,,,--none--,1,0,0,0,0,0,,,

When data was uploaded, it added "Barnes and Noble" as "Manufactured by", in products without any name in "Manufactured by" field.

Questions:
1- To revert back, can I just re-install the database files, or do I have to re-install the entire site?
2- Also I am **not **getting "Easy Populate" under "Configuration", It is under the "Tools". How can get that to show?