I've Integrated an Excel Bulk File Upload w/ Pictures (images)

nzmike wrote:

Mike,

This is not actually my script, it is hrdfsique's, I just refered to it. Maybe he can answer your questions.

Oh sorry - I thought you were *both* Glenn's!

I'm working now to add code to hardfsique's solution to import a category ID column as well... for my purposes they will be categories already in the DB (since I don't need that many) so when I've got it working I can post my version if people are interested....

Will that then map the product to the corresponding category?

Yep, I am just adding an extra column to the spreadsheet and then assigning the product to the category... haven't had much chance to work on it yet but will get it working over the next few days hopefully.

All credit to hardfsique though - am using his code to do this pretty easy addition!

That sounds great, cheers.

And yes, all credit to hrdfsique, he has saved me so much time with this :o) I think it is so good that people like him are willing to put in what is obviously so much work and then to share this with others like me. I only wish I had the skills to do the same. But hopefully my experiences so far can also help others...

nzmike wrote:

Sorry, coming late into the conversation, but I thought I might be able to help with some clarification.

If it helps think of the product as general information about the product (default picture, category and manufacturer mappings, etc).  The product variant would be the more detailed information (price, weight, dimensions, inventory, etc).

In your situation say you have pre-owned versions of "star wars" in vhs, dvd, and blueray you have options of how you could enter this into the database depending on how you want a customer view them.

1 you could make a product "star wars" then have a single product variant with a dropdown menu(attributes) for choosing vhs, dvd, or blueray.  The items would have price adjustments based on which one you choose.

2 you could make a product "star wars" and have 3 product variants...one each for vhs, dvd, and blueray.  Each format of the movie would have it's own pricing and add-to-cart button.


___________________________________________________________

On a seperate note I was thinking multiple variants could be imported with an excel file with some programming changes.  On the excel file add a column for Variant# with a default value of 1.  You would just have to increment the number for subsequent variants of the same product(the rest of the product columns other than price etc staying the same).  Then in the import routine when it runs across the a variant# >1 it would use the last productID and add a variant to the productvariant table.  You could even change the templateID on the main product based on there being multiple variants.

I (as well as millions of others) would appreciate if you would share your bulk upload utility. This is the only obstacle keeping me from being an internet merchant! you see, i have a subscription to Doba, I get a spreadsheet with with hundreds (maybe thousands) of products with everything i need to upload into nopCommerce, however, I don't know how to do this bulk upload so that everything ends up in its appropriate category and sub-category. I would like to do it on a daily basis in order to keep my prices up to date.

I would appreciate your help. I'll send the spreadsheet via PM

Thanks for your help.

Robert Lobaina
www.integratedbrands.biz

nzmike wrote:

I am very interested in having the productst end up under their correct Category and Sub-Category...when you finish, would you mind please sharing it? I would be so grateful!!

Robert Lobaina
www.integratedbrands.biz

I'll be working on this over the weekend folks - I wasn't planning to do sub-categories but thinking about it a bit more I will probably need some sub-categories myself so will try and do this as well.

So, without making this *really* complicated can people who want the category/sub-category feature tell me what they'd need?

Just to re-iterate, what am (now) planning to do is just have two extra columns, one for category and one for sub-category and in that would be the numeric ID of the category (so you will need to know these from the DB) and when the product is read in it simply assign that product to the category and sub-category.  I will also add code to not assign the sub-category if it's not filled in.  

Do you folks see the need for supporting more than one category/sub-category for a product?  (e.g: a Japanese anime DVD may have two categories ("Movies" and "DVD") and many sub-categories ("Anime", "Foreign Language", "World Cinema", "Comedy").... is this sort of thing that is going to be useful to people?  I'm thinking in the category and subcategory columns users could just seperate the relevant categories and sub-categories by commas - this way you could have one or more in each of the spreadsheet columns:

eg:
Category column = 1,4
Sub-category column: 6,12,14,22

You'll have to bare with me here though - this needs to be written and tested properly and I'm very new to nop and I also have a day job and a "life" so it may take me a little while to get it done sorry.

Mike

Mike,

If you're going to do category with comma separated values, then there is really no need for category and subcategory fields.  You could simply put all applicable categoryID numbers in the one field(it doesn't really matter if they are a root category or sub-category)