chuckrey:
Hi I am getting closer to launching this plugin on a live site and have been testing on a temporary url. My plan is to cross reference my QB data base w/ the SBA data base each day as products are replenished almost daily and sold daily. In addition to the existing products in the database, there will be new products added to the inventory that were not previously in the database. This requires a manual addition in ZC w/ attributes. I may be missing something and I apologize if I am. Is there a way to add products to the SBA database individually (sometimes there is only 1 brand new product added) without having to shuffle the entire sba database? For some reason, when I process the "Add product attributes that are NOT display-only", it duplicates all the pre-existing data within SBA forcing me to remove the data and re-add. Ideally, I would like to be able to add the one or two products to ZC then add just those products to the SBA data.
I am using 1.5.8a, Responsive template. url is pfcfurnitureindustries.com..... I apologize if this has been addressed, I struggled to find it by search in the thread search option. Thank you so much the plugin in great.
I have no recollection of quite a similar question being asked. Please allow me to try to describe what I understand so that can help identify one or more ways to address the issue(s).
A) Have an "established" store that is using SBA to track product that have attributes.
B) Have a method of adding product to the store.
C) The method to add product to the store occasionally includes product that have attributes.
D) The method of adding product with attributes to the store includes product not previously tracked by SBA.
E) Want to be able to address new product with attributes by making it accessible to SBA for stock control of attribute related product.
So far so good?
Then, a few things come to mind as questions:
- Does the addition of product with attributes include product already assigned to SBA and have you worked through the associated stock management? (Either adding the quantity to be addressed or make the available quantity whatever is being imported?)
- Do product transition from having attributes to not having attributes? (This is like deleting the attribute(s) from a specific product. I'm not necessarily referring to the addition of product that do not have attributes, though there may be an offshoot from that discussion/answer.)
- Does the addition of product with attributes necessarily generate a new attribute off of an existing product already tracked by SBA? (E.g., Large colored shirts now have a newly available color.)
- How many user selectable attributes (option names) are to be assigned to a product? (E.g. T-shirt of a given (fixed) size with (selectable) colors [One option name: color] or perhaps T-shirt of multiple (selectable) sizes available in multiple (selectable) colors [two option names: size and color]).
As to the query that was executed in the SBA Configuration area ("Add product attributes that are NOT display-only"). That (and other) queries were written with a specific task in mind and were generally hard coded for consideration against the entire database. BUT... I have heard of others adding their own set of queries or as originally developed/commented by Pottery House, to modify them to perform a desired operation.
I would generally discourage revising the existing functionality and instead add one or more new options to accomplish the task. At least in this way existing functionality would remain as seen necessary to perform and updates would be "easier". If you do go with the addition of one or more new queries, post either here or in github, notifiers could be added into the code to better support such modification and support removing your changes from the plugin's code.
So, yes, though I have not today reviewed the operation of the "Add product attributes that are NOT display-only" selection, it does not surprise me that the result is duplication of existing SBA variants, mostly because the statement doesn't say: "Add new product attributes that are NOT display-only" or "Add product attributes that are NOT display-only AND do NOT exist" or some variation of a similar statement. Basically, what that feature does is go through all product, if the product has attributes and the attributes are not display-only, then that combination is added. Again, as I recall there is no comparison/evaluation against the existing SBA variants.
Further, as to more "user" controlled addition of variants, unfortunately, I haven't created an alternate "external" method I trust to be consistently properly executed. I say that because as more functionality/features are available, database integrity becomes ever more important and dependent on proper configuration of the input file/correlation that can easily be corrupted by user input. Import of incorrectly typed text could cause generation of data across multiple tables, potentially requiring significant rework/revision to correct all of the involved tables (Product options, product options values, product option values to product options, products attributes, SBA variant table to name a few). Basically, there's so many potential problems that I have only approached that operation on a case-by-case basis with each being very unique and specific. The above original question, to me, seems manageable depending on answers to the questions.
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