integrate zencart + existing stock system?

Hi everybody,

we are considering the use of zencart for a shop for a shoe-store.

There is one thing we need to consider before starting to build our zencart shop though:
we have built a stock management system for the shoe-store already on our own

this system contains

• shoes
• sizes
• amounts in stock
• prices

Our client now asks us to build a webshop ON TOP of this existing stock system, because otherwise, he would have to enter his stocks in 2 systems. Right now when he sells a pair of shoes in his "real life" store, the number of shoes available in his stock is automatically adjusted in his mysql database.

So, is it possible somehow to make our current stock database available for zencart. I know this wil not be possible out-of-the-box, but we would like to know if this is a situation we could create, or do you think it's rather impossible or too much work ?

Thanks already, your advice is greatly appreciated and we really look forward to using zencart so we keep our fingers crossed

This could be done since you are using a MYSQL database, but the problem at the moment is that Zen Cart does not track stock by the product's options, i.e. the sizes. The stock tracking by attribute is coming in v1.4. The new functionality is at least several months away at this time.

You need to compare the tables in the current system to the Zen Cart tables for these areas. Betting that they are not the same, this would be the difficult part One of them will require adjusting.

My opinion with out knowing the other is that if it is used only for stock tracking and no other purpose, that this is the one to adjust. As Zen Cart uses this information for many many purposes. changing it would also require re-writing the cart code to be able to find the correct info in the altered tables.

As attributes will also be involved ther are about 7 tables that have the information for this.

You will probably require the stock-by-attributes module also to be able to track shoe #1, in color and size as I suppose that you currently do.

The simplest solution by far is to build an interpreter database. This would take the existing inventory database, identify which column matches which in the zencart database, then create a new table which contains all the relevent data needed to dump into zencart. You can then create a CRON job to upload the data regularly.

System can be built in Excel then ported into something like Access for moving the data around, or purely in an RDBMS like Access, then uploaded to the online database using the LOAD DATA INFILE command. Or you could build it in PHP and manipulate from one mysql database to another and skip the offline portion altogether.

Your preference as to how you accomplish this but you can be assured it can be achieved technically :)

BTW - Happy Belated New Year Kobra :)