Importing Shopping Cart Database 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.
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. The 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. correcrt format for five dollars is 5.00 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 50 option pairs separated by the "^". Each option pair is separated by the colon ":". The option par is A string for the options "red for an extra $1.00, white for an extra $2.00 and blue for an extra $3.00" would look like this: "Red:1.00^White:2.00^Blue:3.00^" The shopping cart allows for 4 sets of product options of up to 50 pairs each. The additional options are names as shown below. option2_string option3_string option4_string productoptions_5 - text box that allows users to input up to 200 characters t personalize items. product_options_6 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 http://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. image_url - 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. 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 capicty of items or categories. |