Easy Populate 1.2.5.4 support

If you import the new file it will overwrite/update the current items.

It's not necessary to have all the columns in the new file to update prices. you just need the model, price and EOREOR columns.

awev:

snipped

Dag nab it, why did you have to ask such a hard question?

Hey awev, I haven't logged on in a while. Just want to say thanks for your detailed answer! :cool:

makeup4brides:

:) That did it ! ;)

Only problem is the images are not showing still ...

Hello Makeuo4brides :smile:

Glad I was of help (was a surprise for me) with your EP issue. Did you manage to get your images issue sorted?

Best wishes,

Freshstart

awev:

Makeup4Brides,
FreshStart was correct, EOREOR denotes End of Row/End of Record. That helps EP know when one record/row ends and another begins. As for the images, did you upload them before trying to import the EP file?

Makeup4Brides and FreshStart,
Take a look at http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=410120&postcount=856. It was a post I did a few pages back as a quick and ugly FAQs for EP. A couple post below it is another one for attributes by another user. I am updating my sig to provide quick links that should show up on all of my posts.

Hello Awev

Many thanks for your previous advice and support. I have just been introduced to EP and as you will have seen from a recent post I am not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to understanding it.

Would you be willing to outline for me (very simply) what it is that you actually have to do to get stock information onto your website. I am having difficulty understanding your previous post and how to put that advice into practice :frusty:

What I am trying to eventually do is download stock information via a XML live feed from a supplier, import that into a spreadsheet, since the info will not transfer directly to Zencart. Then from the spreadsheet to Zencart in the form of a tab delimited text file.

Up to now I have installed EP onto a test site with no issues. I have saved the XML info to a Excel text file. I am unsure of exactly what to do with it from there?

As with Makeup4brides example I understand that I would need to place stock information underneath a line of text, produced within a downloaded EP file, then upload that to my site?

Do you think you can offer me further simple advice?, or refer me to a source of further information. I am a total beginner :frusty:

Best wishes,

Freshstart

Hello FreshStart,
Open your XML live feed in Excel as you have, and check the info. Is it all there? Can you tell what is what? Would you mind sending me a copy so I can look at it and tell what is going on?

Have you entered a couple products manually yet into ZC? If so then download that info using EP so you have a template to use, and something to refer to. Open it as a new spreadsheet in Excel. You will be switching between the XML and the EP spreadsheets, copying info from one and pasting into another.

What you will do is copy the stock level info from the XML live feed and paste it into the EP spreadsheet under v_products_quantity.

If you have a database that supports the importing/exporting of XML info you may be able to just use that, along with an update command.

Myself, I use OpenOffice for a number of reasons, so I may not be the best one to help you. I don't care to us Micro$oft products if I can help it. I prefer open source, and that includes Linux. I haven't used Excel, Access, or even M$ Word for close to a decade. I did get a copy of M$ Office 97 when I built a computer back in 1998, yet I haven't used it since (came as a bundled package with windoze 98 for cheap.)

Well Kia920,
What was the answer? Did you need help on entering the HTML code, the style of the text, the tools to use, or what? That last question was so open-ended that it did make it hard to answer. So, what have you come up with? A little more feedback would be nice. Ok, I just want to know what details you are thanking me for.

You set out a plan on how you would go about uploading your images, and product info using EP. Did that work out for you? And what about IM2? Was the people over on the IM2 forums able to help you as well?

I can wait another three (3) weeks for an answer. I know real life makes demands of all of us, and we can't be here all of the time (my cable internet was out for the weekend - real life stinks at times).

Hope all is going well.

Hello Awev,

Hello FreshStart,
Open your XML live feed in Excel as you have, and check the info. Is it all there? Can you tell what is what? Would you mind sending me a copy so I can look at it and tell what is going on?

I have sent you a PM with the information you requested.

Best wishes,

Freshstart :smile:

Hi Awev, I know how to add additional fields to EP thanks to your other post.

I was wondering if you know how to add additional fields (ex. alias, catalog_page_no, sku, etc) to the database.

There's this post http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57924 that explains how to add additional fields to the same products table, but I think putting the additional fields on a different table would be better when the time to upgrade comes.

Hello TJ1,
That is an easy thing, just go to the Patch SQL Install and issue a couple commands.

First, we will start with a simple command,

SHOW DATABASES;

This tells us the database name that we will use. Next, issue the

SHOW TABLES FROM db_name;

We use the database name(s) returned from the SHOW DATABASE command in place of db_name in the above command. This lets us see if there is a prefix that we need to use.

Next, we use the CREATE TABLE like the following, what I lifted from the address book part of ZC:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS "zencart"."zc1_address_book";
CREATE TABLE  "zencart"."zc1_address_book" (
  "address_book_id" int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  "customers_id" int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  "entry_gender" char(1) NOT NULL default '',
  "entry_company" varchar(32) default NULL,
  "entry_firstname" varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
  "entry_lastname" varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
  "entry_street_address" varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
  "entry_suburb" varchar(32) default NULL,
  "entry_postcode" varchar(10) NOT NULL default '',
  "entry_city" varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
  "entry_state" varchar(32) default NULL,
  "entry_country_id" int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  "entry_zone_id" int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  PRIMARY KEY  ("address_book_id"),
  KEY "idx_address_book_customers_id_zen" ("customers_id")
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
```Things to note: 1) CREATE TABLE  "zencart"."zc1_address_book" means create the table zc1_address_book in the database zencart.  In this case I am using the prefix zc1_ so we would use that in creating a new table. 2) I don't know if you need a crash course in MySQL syntext or not, yet I'll cover a couple basic things.  For more info you can go to [http://mysql.org](http://mysql.org/).  3) int(11) means an integer value extending to 11 places left of the decimal point, while varchar means up to 32 charters in the field. 4) PRIMARY KEY ("address_book_id") indicates what field will be the primary key, while it shows a second key being created called "idx_address_book_customers_id_zen" that is based on the field customers_id.

The easy part is done.  Now you have to insert the needed code in the correct pages in the correct areas, with the correct fields to be displayed and for data entry.  

Just some questions to ask yourself:
A) What fields do you need in the table?
B) What type of fields - decimal, charter, integer, text, blob, etc, and how much information will be contained in each field.
C) What areas do you need the info displayed in? Is is just for the administrator, the administrator and customer? 
D) Will you use the new data in calculations, and if so, how?  Do you have any test data where you already know the answers to that you can use to test the new code with?

Good luck with your project.

Hi, I greatly appreciate any help anyone can give with the problem I'm experiencing.

I have a .txt file of categories/subcats and their corresponding images and descriptions that was generated by Easy Populate Advanced. I'm trying to import that list on a fresh site using Easy Populate Basic, the last release. I keep getting a "Model not found, line was not imported" error message when trying this.

Is this just a compatibility issue? What can I do to work around this? Thanks.

I haven't really used EP advanced, so I'm not sure I may be able to help. I used it once but found it a bit more complicated and just dropped it.

Anyway, with EPA I think you first create categories before being able to upload any products.
EP standard works differently, categories can only be created if there's an associated product model. Or, for the same matter, you cannot update/create anything if there's no product model in the file you upload.

Thanks. How can I work around this?

Dionysian:

Hi, I greatly appreciate any help anyone can give with the problem I'm experiencing.

I have a .txt file of categories/subcats and their corresponding images and descriptions that was generated by Easy Populate Advanced. I'm trying to import that list on a fresh site using Easy Populate Basic, the last release. I keep getting a "Model not found, line was not imported" error message when trying this.

Is this just a compatibility issue? What can I do to work around this? Thanks.

This has been said in many different ways, but here it goes again. On the site you are trying to upload to, download a full EP text file. Open both your text file and the one you just downloaded and compare the top lines (using a spreadsheet). Obviously, they don't match since you are getting the errors.

Copy/paste the data from your text file into the downloaded one, using the last word on the top line as a guide. You will need to assign a model name for all products (1st column), and it needs to be unique. If you need an easy way to do this, just copy/paste the image names into that column and do a replace after highlighting that column. Just replace .jpg (or whatever) with a "null", since the products should all have a unique image, that should work. The first column must be v_product_model and the last colum must be EOREOR, anything in between is what you want to include. Save your changes to a tab delimited text file and upload. Backup your site first so that if something goes astray, you can just restore it back to what it was before the upload.

I just tried to implement my tab-delimited .txt file and I got this error after inserting into the database:

*Warning: move_uploaded_file(/hsphere/local/home/cisaacs7/doctorsmedicalsupplies.com/catalog/temp/DMS_Products_20071009 modified.txt) [function.move-uploaded-file]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /hsphere/local/home/cisaacs7/doctorsmedicalsupplies.com/catalog/admin/includes/functions/extra_functions/easypopulate_functions.php on line 57

Warning: move_uploaded_file() [function.move-uploaded-file]: Unable to move '/tmp/phpmKFwUn' to '/hsphere/local/home/cisaacs7/doctorsmedicalsupplies.com/catalog/temp/DMS_Products_20071009 modified.txt' in /hsphere/local/home/cisaacs7/doctorsmedicalsupplies.com/catalog/admin/includes/functions/extra_functions/easypopulate_functions.php on line 57

Warning: file(/hsphere/local/home/cisaacs7/doctorsmedicalsupplies.com/catalog/temp/DMS_Products_20071009 modified.txt) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /hsphere/local/home/cisaacs7/doctorsmedicalsupplies.com/catalog/admin/easypopulate.php on line 1201

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /hsphere/local/home/cisaacs7/doctorsmedicalsupplies.com/catalog/admin/easypopulate.php on line 1301
*

None of the new products show up, what could be the problem?

Since the first error mssg says "permission denied", I would try a chmod 777 on the temp folder.

That fixed the error I was getting, but the products still don't show up. Could it be that I don't have the columns from the spreadsheet in the right order (like I have the category column before the model number column)?

Hello Dynamica,
Most likely one or both of two things are happening. First, you are on a shared host from the look of things, so you are competing with a number of other people for the server's resources, and it just may be overloaded trying to update everything. Their is not much you can do about that.

The second is a cache somewhere, most likely on your computer. Try flushing the cache in your browser and see if that helps. My internet provider offers PowerBoost, which is them implamenting a passive proxy cache, which makes things look faster than they really are if you reload static content.

OK folks.

I have installed the mod.

Now my question is this..

will this upload an XML feed file and will it automatically upload the items to my site?

dynamica:

That fixed the error I was getting, but the products still don't show up. Could it be that I don't have the columns from the spreadsheet in the right order (like I have the category column before the model number column)?

Yes, the model column has to be the first one.

awev:

Hello Dynamica,
Most likely one or both of two things are happening. First, you are on a shared host from the look of things, so you are competing with a number of other people for the server's resources, and it just may be overloaded trying to update everything. Their is not much you can do about that.

The second is a cache somewhere, most likely on your computer. Try flushing the cache in your browser and see if that helps. My internet provider offers PowerBoost, which is them implamenting a passive proxy cache, which makes things look faster than they really are if you reload static content.

I cleared the cache and still no products show up, but I think I am on a shared server. The catalog file has about 2000 products on it, am I going to be able to implement this many products on a shared server?