Attributes for 30K+ Products - Pulled from API across 300+ Categories - HELP!!!

[gizmosandguns]

New to ZenCart and wondering if it will fit our needs or if I'll be stuck with Magento...

I love straight forward customization and full PHP implementation but unless I'm missing something there is a huge limitation that I'm not understanding how to get around.

We are attempting to open an Outdoors/Ammo/Firearms ECommerce Presence... Before all the Geeks shouldn't play with Guns comments I'll get to the point.

Distributor API:
Items > provides all Item/Product Information along with 20 Attributes per Item (here's the rub) After some extreme dumbing down of the data being pulled via API and realizing that Zen Cart drops the actual Product Data to a number of different Tables (or at least 2 not to mention linked tables for Categories) I was able to import 32K+ Items...

Departments / Categories: API Provides Both, really should be Top Level, then Subs which is how API Results were dumbed down and fed into Zen Cart... Here's the other rub... The Categories Feed provides 20 "Attribute Labels" which in "Theory" should be easily directly matched up with each Item also pulled from the API...

MFG/Brands: Again had to dumb this down initially and combine Manufactuers and Brands into "Manufactuers" under Zen... Not a huge issue.

Back to Issues...

Lets call this Category "A" or (AMMO), with Subs for (Handgun, Longgun) then Subs for (Rimfire, Centerfire)... So that was straight forward and incredibly easy.... Now there say on low side 40 to high of 100ish Calibers under each of those...

This will also be same case for about 15 other Top and Sub Categories.

Questions:
1) Is there any way to directly reference the 20 Attributes pulled from API on each Product (Without need to created effectively 657,820 different "Attributes" under the Web Interface?

2) Similar Question, as I have the "Calibers" above already in the DB, how would anyone suggest being able to assign each of roughly 6K different Ammo Product Numbers so they will fit into the multiple categories, again without needing to have some minion sit at the web Admin interface for the next 3 years of their life manually updating?

3) Is either of the above possible without basically needing to change how the Core Categories, Products and Attribute Functions work within Zen Cart?

Thanks in advance for all the responses... At a standstill for moment - We won't move forward standing up the Site unless above can be over come, but preference is to hopefully avoid jump to Magento Community which from previous Tech Projects I know will handle these type of functions nearly out of the box.

[kobra]

Have you had a look at easy populate??

It can be seen here
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....Support-Thread

And downloaded here
https://github.com/chaddro/EasyPopulate-4.0

[gizmosandguns]

Yeah... Issue isn't getting the product to a "Master Category" or into Zen Cart... The problem is Zen Cart just doesn't appear to allow or at least easily allow assignment of 20 "DISTINCT" Attributes per Product without creation of a huge and what I believe will be very slow Attributes Table which will have well over 650K Rows instead of simply pulling these attributes directly from each Product's DB Entry which would make a lot more sense from a DB Traffic as well as Query Cost prospective...

Just a thought, this is for a Pet Project, we liked the concept of 100% native PHP with Zen Cart but unless we want the cost overhead of pulling Myself or one of our other Tech Resources off Customer Projects for 6+ months for near complete rewrite most likely we'll be looking at a different platform for this.

[mc12345678]

The idea of 20+ attributes seems extreme. I think within the last year or so I did some research on attributes associated with product and the majority of documents identified perhaps 7 as the most any one product should have in a user experience perspective.

With 20 attributes, a store could nearly have one product, with every attribute further describing the associated millions of products that could be factored from that. Further it would seem that this could be discouraging from a purchasing perspective. Assume the time has been taken to identify the first 19 attributes only to find out at the 20th that the desired product is not available... Works okay if every product is always available for purchase and that the purchasing customer is willing to wait whatever time might be involved if said product is on backorder.

Choose the platform you wish, but can say that there are a number of people that have left ZC, gone through whatever cost and time to get setup only to discover that the other platform has way more problems than the "one" desired feature that drew them to it. Back to ZC they've come.

As to the attribute system, there is a rumored product that is commercial (or will be?) That to some extent replaces the ZC attribute system for something perhaps more robust. I haven't seen it in operation, but have heard about it.

Whatever the choice (and yes you could add whatever "quantity" of fields onto the product table each having whatever associated attribute data desired), good luck with using that many attributes. Would be interested in seeing the result.

[kobra]

Is there any way to directly reference the 20 Attributes pulled from API

What are the 20 attributes for ammo??
Or a link to your suppliers site...

Similar Question, as I have the "Calibers" above already in the DB, how would anyone suggest being able to assign each of roughly 6K different Ammo Product Numbers

Ditto - what are the 6K product numbers representing??
As a shooter, I am not aware that there are 6K differences in ammo...