Importing Shopping Cart Database

Importing Data to Shopping Cart

You may already have a complete database of inventory that you would like to upload and have the shopping cart configure itself. Fortunately, you can.

However, the data must be set up in the correct format. This can be done with programs such as Excel or other spreadsheet software. You will need to create a pipe or tab delimited text file with the following format.

>>To fit in this help page the data is split into multiple lines, your data must be on the same line!<<

Hint: The easiest way to get the format is to add items using the standard shopping cart tools then export the data usig the export feature. This will give you a working format that you can build on.

You can create a delimited file using the top row or header row with the values for each column. The order of the columns is not important if you include a header row. Otherwise, the column order must be the same as listed in the example above.

The Data Fields Are Explained Below

action - the action field should be either "modify, remove or ignore" if left blank, the item will be modified.

category - the category should be one of the existing categories. If the category does not exist, it will create a new one up to 50 total. Limited to 35 characters, case sensitive. If no category is provided, the item will not be added.

item_name - product or name of the oject for sale

item_price - price should be in dollars, do not include the dollar sign, use decimals only not commas, format for five dollars is 5.00

wholesale_price - price should be in dollars, do not include the dollar sign, use decimals only not commas, format for five dollars is 5.00

chargetax - Specify if an item is taxable or non taxable. By default all items are taxable field can be set as "EXCLUDETAX" to make the item non taxable when collecting tax on other items.

item_quantity - number of items available. If set to 0, item will be displayed as out of stock.

stock_number - the stock number should be a unique number for the item. no spaces, numbers and letters only. if no stock number is supplied or the number is an invalid format, the item will not be added.

brief_description - short description displayed on thumbnail pages.

full_description - long description, displayed on full product page.

weight - item weight in pounds, used to calculate shipping costs.

option_string - options strings have up to 100 option pairs separated by the "^".

Each option pair is separated by the colon ":".

The option pair is
option-name:option-price:option-weight

A string for the options "medium for an extra $1.00 extra weight 0.5 lbs, large for an extra $2.00 extra weight 0.8 lbs and xlarge for an extra $3.00 with extra weight of 1.2 lbs" would look like this: "medium:1.00:0.5^White:2.00:0.8^Blue:3.00:1.2^"

The shopping cart allows for 4 sets of product options of up to 100 pairs each. The additional options are names as shown below.

option2_string - same fomat as option_string

option3_string - same fomat as option_string

option4_string - same fomat as option_string

Text Input Options - There are 2 options that alow for user input of text.

Each option string is made up of values seperated by a colon ":"
OPTION_title:OPTION_size:OPTION_maxlength:OPTION_cost:OPTION_weight:

OPTION_title - The display title of the option
OPTION_size - The character field length
OPTION_maxlength - The maximun number of characters to accept
OPTION_cost - Extra cost is option is added to item
OPTION_weight - Extra weight is option is added to item

productoptions_5 - text box that allows users to input up to 200 characters to personalize items.

product_options_6 - text box that allows users to input up to 200 characters to personalize items.

buy_url - The buy url is for websites offering items at outside locations such as affiliate based products. The buy url will be a complete url such as https://domain.com/productpage.html. If there is a buy url the add to cart button will redirect to the buy url rather than adding the item to the shopping basket. The absence of a url will allow normal operation of the shopping cart. This feature allows merchants to mix their stock with outside offers and products from alternate retailers and earn an income from refferals of sales.

imageurl - The image url is a term associated with affiliate datafeeds. This is the outside image location for the product. This location can be used to extract the images from outside websites or display the images using the affiliate merchant's bandwith. There are no programs currently to utilize this field, however it is in place to assist in managing datafeeds or exporting data to affiliate programs.

Custom Content Fields - custom01, custom02, custom03 and custom04 are custom content fields. The custom fields are used by the tabbed content display option or can be used to populate custom designed html item or shopping cart layouts.

ifattachimage - Designates if the item requires an image upload to complete the order. Field value can be blank for none and INCLUDEIMAGE if an image is required.

packagesize - The number of items that will fit into a standard package. This field is used to calculate shipping if the option is selected in the shipping charge setting.

discountstring - Provides the data for quantity discounts. The string should be formatted in sets seperated by the ^ character. The first field is Minimum Quantity second is Discount Price Each and the third is Wholesale Price each all numercic values. Example 100:100:90^200:75:65^300:50:40^::^::^

sale_price - The sale price of an item will override the retail price and display on item pages with a crossed out price followed by the sale price.

shopkeywords - meta tag keywords for an individual item page

shoppagetitle - The html page title for an item page. If not defined the page tite will be the item name.

itemdiscountgroup - The group name for discount groups used in quantity discounts and item conditional pricing such as buy one get one free.

customtxtvaluestring - String of custom values defined by the site owner and seperated by the ^ character.

chargereturnship - value set to "CHARGERETURNSHIP" to include return shipping as part of the sale or blank for not being used.

labeloverridestring - Labels or titles for each product option in a string seperated by ^ character.

itemshipgroup - The name of the shipping group is an alternate set of shipping rules apply to the item.

cross_sell_string - String of up to 6 stock numbers for cross selling display seperated by the ^ character..

The file should be saved as a text file with the extension .txt

Then use the "Import Data" function from the shopping cart management page. The file will be uploaded the same way other files are uploaded. Once the file is on the server, the data will be compiled into the existing database.

If the import is sucessful, you will get a sucessful message. If there are errors encountered during the compileation, the errors will be listed on the response page.

If there is an unrecoverable error, the import will stop. Those errors include reaching maximum capacity of items or categories and exceeding the 30mb size limit on the upload.

Clean Up Tools - The import feature allows for minimal cleanup of fields beyond the standard formating done by the import program.

Remove html - You can additionally choose to remove html formatting from all fields. This is particularly useful when importing data from an outside hosting system that may have extraneous html or form fields embedded in the descriptions or data fields.
Remove or Replace Characters - This feature allows you to remove a character or string of characters from the data. Certain programs such as excel will add their own characters which need to e removed. In the case of excel it will commonly add quotes around the fields which then appear in the descriptions. Simply set the character to remove and that character will be removed from each string of data.

Using A Header Row - The delimited import file does not require a header row. However, you can use a header row to override the default order. This makes it much easier to import data outside data because you will only need to use the header row to define the value of each column.

Understand that if no header row is used, then the field order must be exact and follow the default oder for our shopping cart.