Easy Populate 1.2.5.4 support

Hello Steve,
The easiest way that I can think of is to save two copies of the file. The first, or master, copy you leave alone, and keep the extra column. Next, select save as ... and give it a name like file_for_ep.csv or whatever you want. In the future just update the master and create an EP copy with the new info.

The other option is to create a heading for the column such as v_my_calc_price. Just hope that EP disreguards the column - as it should since you don't actually assing it to anything in the EP files.

Hope this helps.

Thanks
AWEV. much appreciated

Hello,
I'm trying to import items using ep. I got a file from a site called Inventory Source that's supposed to work with ep and OSC, so I assumed it would work with Zen as well. When I try to import, I get this error:
SKIPPED! - Model: - Category name(s) too long (max. 32)
I don't know enough about these txt files to be able to figure out what the problem is, or to build my own from scratch. Is there an easy fix for this? Thank you.

I downloaded EP 1.2.5.4 yesterday and everything was going fine, but I noticed when I try to use the "search" in my admin catalog that no products show up. How can I fix this?

akalsha:

Hello,
I'm trying to import items using ep. I got a file from a site called Inventory Source that's supposed to work with ep and OSC, so I assumed it would work with Zen as well. When I try to import, I get this error:
SKIPPED! - Model: - Category name(s) too long (max. 32)
I don't know enough about these txt files to be able to figure out what the problem is, or to build my own from scratch. Is there an easy fix for this? Thank you.

On your site, download a full EP text file and compare the top line of it to the top line of what you are trying to upload (you will need a spreadsheet program like Excel 97). The v_product_model is the first field (not an option) and is limited to 32 characters and it cannot be left blank. In osCommerce, there is a default of 18 (if I remember correctly) and your upload would not work there either. I can see a description being larger than 32 char. but not a model. If the fields are not in the correct sequence, use a spreadsheet and paste the data into their correct locations and save as a tab delimited text file before uploading.

If all else fails, go back to the website and look for some instructions.

Hi, whenever I download my store file, some of the product descriptions get cut off. This mostly happens to descriptions with bullets. How can I fix this problem?

Thanks

james739:

Hi, whenever I download my store file, some of the product descriptions get cut off. This mostly happens to descriptions with bullets. How can I fix this problem?

Thanks

Hello James,
What program are you using to open the file with? Crimson Editor can open a file with a line of up to 32K in length. Other programs, such as spreadsheets, may have a 256 charter limit per entry. A database program, such as MySQL, can declare a entry (field) as being the type of TEXT, what will allow up to 32 or 64K of data (text). Look a couple pages back on this forum for info on programs that don't have small limits, like 2K per item (one page of text). The issues where that EP inserts all of the attribute info for each item, and so the spreadsheets like Excel and OpenOffice would run out of rows.

One question - when you use bullets, do you use the html code to create the list with bullets, or do you use <tab>* so you don't have to type in 4 or 5 spaces, and still have it indented? The tab key inserts a tab charter, and a lot of times that is used as a field separator, and so EP may be putting the rest of the description in the next field, or discarding it - thinking that you have two or more items described, and only using the first.

lmassia:

I downloaded EP 1.2.5.4 yesterday and everything was going fine, but I noticed when I try to use the "search" in my admin catalog that no products show up. How can I fix this?

After adding new items you should go to Admin>Tools>Store Manager and use 'Reset ALL Products Master Categories ID'. You should also use Update ALL Products Price Sorter, so that price is sorted correctly.

jayenne:

Hi all, I have written a tutorial explaining the steps and processes involved with importing Attributes using easy populate - I hope it helps.

If there are miss understanding on my part leading to errors please forgive me, correct me then sue me ;)

• on that not I would like to say, BACKUP! then BACKUP AGAIN! any loss of data remains your loss NOT mine - I accept no liability whatsoever for any damage, harm or act of god resulting from you following this tutorial (Phew - close one)....

• ...Also, for a pretty version with tabular examples CLICK HERE

HOW TO: prepare and import an Attribute file using easy populate...

Login in to the backend of your website.

You should ensure that all options and attributes that may be used by any of the products you wish to import, have been created and are correct.

Select from the top menu: tools > Easy Populate

From the right column under Data Files, select Attributes - this will export the current attribute data from your site.

Select Save from the newly created attributes row within the table to save the attributes file to your computer.

You now have a popup window asking you to open/save the file… Save this file to a location on your computer then import this file into Excel (or equivalent) as a tab delimited file.

Reading and understanding the file format, row & columns….

Note: Within the new excel worksheet you will now see a set of headers on the first row (these should never be altered). Each subsequent row is the attribute details of a single product.

For each row, the columns read as follows…

PRODUCTS….

v_products_id = The products ID number... e.g: 375
v_products_model = The products Model number... e.g: 123987

The first two **columns v_products_id **& v_products_model identify the product you wish to add the attributes to. These columns are the products ID and the products model number.
The product ID is required, the model number is not – however it is a safeguard and should be included where possible.
.
.
.
.
Jayenne

Thanks Jayenne for your thoughtful effort to document all this.
I found your tutorial in search for the 'symtom' that I'm having that is, (please follow sequences below)

1. I've been successfully using Easy Populate to bulk upload all products fine.
2. Now I am trying to add 'size' attribute to all products, which I thought would be very simple.
3. Zen cart's Option Name Manager would not let me add to All products except when those All products have at least one option value already set.
4. So I decide to use Easy Populate to 'set' Size Option Name to all products. (I haven't read your tutorial yet to this point) I've linked v_products_model field from step #1 above and set v_attribute_options_id to 2, v_attribute_options_name_1_1 to size, v_attribute_values_id to 19, and v_attribute_values_name to 7. As I upload to my server, it gave updates were successful message.
5. But step #4 is not working regardless of the message. Products don't show the attribute, and it's not there from the Admin.
6. Now I have read your tutorial, and see that v_products_id is a requirement. Downloading from the admin panel of my current products did not give me the field.

Now my question is, does your tutorial applies only to the Advanced version? If so, is attributes functionality not available in standard version? Is there any workarounds?

Thanks in advance,

Steve Kim.

Hello Steve Kim,
The advanced version of Easy Populate (EPA) is a commercial version and supported by the retailer, or the publisher. The instructions you quoted are for the basic Easy Populate, version 1.2.5.4, not the newer (and more buggy) version 2.7x.

Please keep in mind that these are generic instructions, that will work on the majority of systems. Unforutenitly, not all systems are set up the same. Some people may still be running version 1.28 of Zen Cart, while most of upgraded to version 1.37. Some hosting companies may still be running Apache 1.x/PHP 3.x, while most have made the switch to 2.2x/4.x. So, while the instructions are fine in a general sort of way, your mileage may very.

That doesn't mean we wont help, just that we will have to figure out what is happening. I am not the one with knowlge in this area, so I will leave the rest to someone else.

awev:

Hello Steve Kim,
The advanced version of Easy Populate (EPA) is a commercial version and supported by the retailer, or the publisher. The instructions you quoted are for the basic Easy Populate, version 1.2.5.4, not the newer (and more buggy) version 2.7x.

Please keep in mind that these are generic instructions, that will work on the majority of systems. Unforutenitly, not all systems are set up the same. Some people may still be running version 1.28 of Zen Cart, while most of upgraded to version 1.37. Some hosting companies may still be running Apache 1.x/PHP 3.x, while most have made the switch to 2.2x/4.x. So, while the instructions are fine in a general sort of way, your mileage may very.

That doesn't mean we wont help, just that we will have to figure out what is happening. I am not the one with knowlge in this area, so I will leave the rest to someone else.

You're right. I should've included what I had when asking if the tutorial was for the commercial version.

What I have is the non-commercial version 1.2.5.4. I basically need some help updating attributes (size) to all of my products - yes, one kind of product.

To summarize the problem, 1. EP does not update products_attributes table even with update success message is returned, and alongside 2. EP's download Model/Attributes tab delimited .txt file does not give me v_products_id field.

However, I've modified the easypopulate.php to include v_products_id fields, like so below, doing EP upload with v_products_id field present still did not update products_attributes table although EP's upload sucess message returns.

// VJ product attributes begin
 case 'attrib':
  $iii = 0;
  $filelayout = array(
   'v_products_id'    => $iii++,
   'v_products_model'    => $iii++
   );

Has anyone updated one's products' options using EP, as initial upload (no existing attributes/options)??

Thanks,

Steve Kim.

Hi,
hope someone can help me with an easy way of listing the product at their NETT price with any taxes included.
I have a lot of products to go and edit prices with if I need to work out each one minus the taxes.
Any idea will be great , did a search and couldnt find anything :(

Hello GabbyTwin,

gabbytwin:

Hi,
hope someone can help me with an easy way of listing the product at their NETT price with any taxes included.
I have a lot of products to go and edit prices with if I need to work out each one minus the taxes.
Any idea will be great , did a search and couldnt find anything :(

I am not sure I know what you are asking. In Zen Cart you can turn on the displaying of the price with tax for the customer, administer, one or the other, both or neither.

Most people suggest opening the download from EP in a spreadsheet as it may be quicker than even a flat database (i.e., SQLite). This would make it easy to add your own column, for your own use, such as price_with_tax, and just have it calculated for you (price*tax rate).

If you think everything is being downloaded with the tax already added, and you want to remove it, then the new column would be something like price_without_tax, and you have to figure out how much to discount something to get the price before tax. The price before tax is a little more tricky as you can't just use the tax rate. An example is if I sell something for 100 units (dollars, lair, euros, yens, etc), and tax is 10%, the total is 110 units. If I just subtracted 10% from the final sale price I would be subtracting 11 units (10% of 110), leaving 99 units, a difference of 1%, or 1 unit, from the actual price before tax.

You could also alter EP's files to add a new field (column), and make sure you include the proper code in both the up-load and down-load sections. You would need to make sure you use the correct table and field in EP's database to do so, yet it most likely could be done.

Maybe AWEV can answer this one (Help)
I try to download the attributes and the file shows only one attribute, the same one, for all my products.
Example. If I have a shirt color blue and a choice of red, the attributes download shows all 1050 products as having only a red attribute and ignores the blue attribute.

Thanks

Hello Elkbow,
Sorry, I have not started playing with attributes yet in ZC, and have avoided them in EP up to this point. I know that will change in the near future, I am just worried about one headache at a time right now. Just from what you have said, and other posts in the last 10 or 15 pages, I will try offering a guess.

First, you may want to change your shirt to have no color, and add blue as an option. This would then show blue as an attribute. Make sure that you indicate that the customer MUST select an attribute - with blue being the default, or red as an option.

As to EP adding the attribute to all of your items, I think there is a problem with the logic it uses to retrive the info, and then output it. I am rather sure that you don't sell 1050 shirts of the same type with the same color options. How to fix it I don't know at this point, just rest assured that it doesn't goofe up to much with the actual database(ZC), and that seems to remain correct. This is where I am NOT knowldegable about the things.

To summersize, set the default color of the shirt to blank, add blue as an option, making it the default, and force people to select a color.

Hope this helps in some small way.

Awev
Thanks for the reply. I used that example of color to make it easy. Actually I think I have too many attributes. This is an Archery Shop and there are really a LOT of combinations available to the customer. So What I have now done, is list the products, then go into the attributes and configure them one at a time. If you really want to see how many-- and EP would really help here -- look at archeryshop.com/zencart.

Look up the product Arrows, or under Accessories/Inserts/aluminum Inserts and you will realize how important the EP Attribute function is to me. I was considering a download by MySql, correct the table, then upload, but I'll probable wack my DB.

I appreciate your answer, and when installed for another company, I will use your method at the start.

Elkbow

Hi Elkbow,
Make a backup of your database that is part of ZenCart, then download it to your computer. If you don't have MySQL set up yet go ahead and grab it, along with the GUI tools. You can use the Admin GUI tool to do a restore from the file you downloaded.

Don't worry about messing up your database, since you imported it as a restore operation you can do it again, if you break it the first (or fifth) time, and keep hacking away at it till you get it the way you like it. You can use the Browswer GUI tool to help examine everything, execute "SELECT" commands, run updates, etc.

Once everything is as you like it do a backup of your local copy, drop the ZC database, and a restore from your local backup (the edited, corrected version).

If you have never used MySQL before, or any type of SQL rdbm, then this will be a nice crash course in it. The browser GUI provides some nice, helpful, info in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

I keep getting this error upon checkout -
Please update your order ...
Product Name: Bariatric Mattress Only 48 W ... Quantity Units errors -
You ordered a total of: 1 Min: 0 Units: 0

I only get this error with the products I entered using epa.
The minimum, units and quantity all show up the same in the products manually entered as the products entered via epa.

I have tried to turn off any type of inventory control using the stock, listing and product type edits but nothing takes this error message off. The only way it disappeared was when I went into an item (first entered using epa) manually and changed the product quantity from 1 to 99999. I have over 8000 products that I entered using several different databases. I really don't want to go into the databases and change all the quantities again. I just want to disable any type of inventory control (which I thought I did). I don't have inventory issues.

One more epa related problem - I cannot add or change the quantity of products ordered on any of the items entered using epa. The manual products all have a quantity altering button available at the product description page and the checkout page but never for the epa loaded products.

Any ideas?

Dear Colleagues,

New Zenner here. I note that there are two EasyPop versions available on Download. One is Easypop Langer and the other is Easypop from OSC. Which one is the best, in your opinion. In the meantime, I shall endeavour to read all of the post's associated with EP and try to locate an easy to read and understand method of installing the mod into Zencart.

On another note, why has the issue of there being no way to import XML live feed into Zencart not been resolved yet? If it has been resolved, please post details. On this latter issue, I have read the following article;

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-xml-parsing-rss-1-0

Thx.

freshstart.

Does the free download one work on the most recent version of zencart or do we have to purchase the mod for the $65 on langers site?