Access

[HowardW]

Hi all
Have a liitle problem
I have a prouct layout which shows a "new" icon for new products
I cannot find the table in Access to change these.
With 1200 products
I would like to do it easily.
Tried to do it with an export however got so many errors do not want to try it again
Regards
Howard

[leehack]

If 12000 products are using that layout I would imagine that you have it set as the product layout in site options or on your shop top page. Simply change it there instead. If you didn't have the logic to work that out, i'd certainly suggest steering clear of the database at all costs.

[HowardW]

No it is 1200
I have a product lay out for new products
I should be able to do a query in Access and change them all
Regards
Howard

[leehack]

You are missing the point Howard, you need to go to one drop down box in site options, select the layout you want to use and that will update all products for you in about 15 seconds flat. Why do you want to go into Access at all, this is standard functionality easily catered for. Steer clear of the database, it's a labrynth.

[HowardW]

Hi Lee
Yes you are quite correct if I do want to change the other 1,000,
but I don't want to, therefore, I have to hack the database - I just cannot find the necessry codes
Regards
Howard

[leehack]

Are they all over the place or in the same sections a lot of them? If in the same sections you could change the parent section setting so they all read from that, surely that would reduce the work by quite a bit?

[HowardW]

Hi Lee
This is probably beyond the usual use of Access to change all sorts of things on the web site.
I should be able to do a "date", product layout and do a change
The trouble, is as, always Actinic's datebase is a bit difficult!!!!
Regards
Howard

[Duncan Rounding]

Why not add new code into the layout you are using now to show the "new" icon and then create a CV and block the code if the CV is a certain value. If you scoped the CV to product then you can set the value of it per product. This value can then easily be changed by a simplified hierarchical update import.

[HowardW]

Thanks All
Still have a problem, cannot export and reimport - 23,000 lines and all i get is errors and 9,000 products disappear
Have spent an incredible number of hours trying to do a Blockif, but cannot find an operator to handle the date created, or isnewproduct.
So 2 choices, trawl through the whole setup and change the template myself, or ask the wife to do it - on second thoughts
Regards
Howard

[cdicken]

Hi Howard

I'm afraid I know no way of doing what you require. I don't know anyway to make a product as being 'new' based on the date it was added to Actinic.

The only way I know how to do something similar is to manually set a value on each new product you add that marks it as being 'new'. But I appreciate this then is a problem to unmark products as being new.

It will be possible to manually set a date variable in Actinic when you create a new product. What you then need is something (maybe PHP or Javascript) that measures how many days ago that date was, and then either shows or removes the 'new' symbol. This is something you would need to pay a developer to do for you probably.

[fergusw]

Howard,

The [product] table in Actinic has a field called sCreateDate which holds the date/time of when the product line was created in the database.
It is conceivable that any query you would run would use this field.

The layout for each individual product can be controlled by an entry in the [UserDefinedProperties] table where the sValue holds the numerical reference to the layout (442 is standard NEW product layout), the nVariableID field holds the numerical reference to the layout (in this case 65566 - ProductLayout) and sContentID holds the product reference.

To write a query to do this would be reasonably complex as (in the latest version of 8) Actinic does not create an entry for a product layout in the UserDefinedProperties table if it is set to "Use Parent" in order to improve performance, so in cases where there are no specified layout for a particular product you would have to ADD one to this table, in cases where there are entries for products you would have to UPDATE the sValue field to 442 or whatever you wished.

Possibly the PHP method described above by Chris is the better way to go.

Adding in some PHP to a product layout that queries the sCreateDate when the page is build and displays some HTML required if the date is within a certain parameter.

[HowardW]

Hi Fergus
Thanks for the tip, I looked at the [UserDefinedProperties] table, and the solution was obvious. Took 1 minute to write the query and 2 seconds to run it!
Just link this table and the product table (sContentID to Product Reference). Set the Creation date to less than, in my case 2008/01/01, Set sValue to 442, Update this to Null and update nUseParentSetting to 1. Restart Access and it works!
What a relief
Thanks
Again
Howard

[fergusw]

Took 1 minute to write the query and 2 seconds to run it!

Perhaps I should take back the "reasonably complex" part of my response!

Glad it pointed you in the right direction anyway.