Automated one product per section

[GiganticDays]

I would also like to be able to remove the "Section text" field from my csv file import but Actinic (V7) won't let me even though I have unchecked the "Auto Generate Product References" box. Any thoughts?

[wjcampbe]

Section text = name of section to put this page/product in

Product reference = product reference

[fleetwood]

Graeme

I think I managed to crack the import thing after experimentation, and advice from the boards.

My tips are:

Flat file import requires section text
hierachicial file import can be done without it

Create a simple csv without section text, and use hierachicial import (even though you want to import products only, without changing sections) with auto generate references turned off.

Also make sure that your import file only contains headers for the fields contained within your csv file - delete ALL unused headers

csv must include a product ref to do this

Hope that helps

Martin

[EDIT] - this is based on V5 - assume its the same for V8, sure someone else will say if its not

[Jan]

Flat file import doesn't require section text if you are not autogenerating product references and have included the product reference in the file.

I would also like to be able to remove the "Section text" field from my csv file import but Actinic (V7) won't let me even though I have unchecked the "Auto Generate Product References" box. Any thoughts?

Have you included the product reference in the file. If you have, what errors are you getting?

This file works for me, with the default database :

"Product Reference","Full description","Price"
"1","Charles Dickens' classic tale.",600
"2", "Jane Austen's classic tale",700
"3", "Test Thomas Hardy's gripping tale.",900

I have found a problem though, if you try to create products without adding the section text they are created on the database but do not appear in the tree, if you check the database, their parent section id is set to -1 and it should be 0 (they would then appear under the section list as top level products). So only use flat file without section text if you are updating existing products.

This is the file that I tried to import.

"Product Reference","Short Description", "Full description","Price"
"4000", "Jan's test", "Long Description", 1000

Regards,

[GiganticDays]

Have you included the product reference in the file. If you have, what errors are you getting?

Jan
I do includde a product ref in the file and have automatic ref generation turned off, but Actinic tells me it needs something in the Section Text field so it knows where to put the products.

Ideally what I'd like to happen is that when I import my file, existing products are simply updated and new products are created as top-level items which can then be manually relocated to the relevatn section.

Martin
I'll give your idea a try; sounds good.

Thanks

[fleetwood]

Flat file import doesn't require section text if you are not autogenerating product references and have included the product reference in the file.

Jan - this must have changed somewhere between v5 (ancient, I know ), and v8, as you get the error Graeme describes in v5 when tring to import a flat file, but not with a hierarchicial file).

Graeme - experiment and you will get there (worth reading the help files, although I didn't find them as clear as they could have been) - and do BACK UP BEFORE EXPERIMENTING (I managed to managle at least one test database due to using incorrect header layout).

One more tip to add (which others have clarified before), make sure that all imported fields have data in them ie when you look at the records in excel, if some fields are empty, you must populate these with dummy data, else the import can go wrong - this won't apply if are just importing simple product records and nothing else, but may crop up if you have a mix of products, sections and customvariables to import

[pinbrook]

this is a real pain, i nthe early days the froogle feed produced an export file with both section name and product reference, I used this to create a flat file import.

As time went on the section name got dropped --- boo hoo.

I don't understand why actinic has made it mandatory to have section name as the product reference is the only unique field therefore should be sufficient on its own to import a flat file.

A simple export facility with a few key fields would be extremely useful as a shell to creating a flat import for simple tasks as price updating.

export prod ref, price, apply a formula for price changes re-import, job done 5 mins.

[fleetwood]

A simple export facility with a few key fields would be extremely useful as a shell to creating a flat import for simple tasks as price updating.

Jo - if its not already in there, do you want to add this to the wish list as a seperate item - gets my backing 100%

I don't understand why actinic has made it mandatory to have section name as the product reference is the only unique field therefore should be sufficient on its own to import a flat file.

Yup, its one of those funny ideas that only Actinic seem to have!
The same cock-eyed logic (and bad database practice) that has customer names stored and indexed as Suffix+Firstname+Surname, instead of indexing seperately on surname.

[GiganticDays]

I tried that but the froogle feed dosen't contain the section text per se.

Martin
The Froogle export does contain the Section Text info; it's under "category" and shows sections and subsections separated by ">".
So if I'm not misunderstanding this, all you'd need to do is replace the ">" with a "|".
Does that make sense?

[pinbrook]

The Froogle export does contain the Section Text info; it's under "category" and shows sections and subsections separated by ">".

I've just done a v8 froogle export, where it does not give you the section name.

you get
link ie domain/acatalog/pagename.html
title ie short description
description ie full description
price
image-link ie domain/acatalog/imagename.jpg
id ie product reference

there is nothing to easily convert to get sectionname

[GiganticDays]

I'm using V7 and the Froogle export gives the following fields:-
product_url
name
description
price
image_url
category
offer_id

Looks like they've dumped the category output - bummer.