Easy Populate 1.2.5.4 support

Problem: Have very large descriptions of my products. Aparantly too large for EP v_product_description field.

I go to catagory in admin and go to a product and add addition data that could not be added through EP.

When I do and update, all the additional data I just added is purged and all that remains is the intial short description.

Question: How or can I upload large descriptions with EP?
or If not How do I keep product descriptions in tact when I update with EP.

Any help would be appreciated

Need to clarify: The additional description I discuss is for products.

I promote a vitamin line and there are quite lengthy and detailed ingredient and recommended usage descriptions.

I get some of these from manufacturers and I cut and paste.

Others I have to create, so after a lot of work, I hate to loose them, when I make global price changes and such with EP.

Thanking any of you in advance for any help or solution.

Johhny,

You will need to use OpenOffice to get longer product descriptions. I don't know if there are limitations in the zencart admin product edit side...

If you truly have LOOOOONG descriptions, you may want to consider breaking this data up into a couple of logical additional fields.

-cj

First time user. Successfully installed and downloaded my store data as it suggested. I opened in excel and added about 5 new products and deleted everything else. I successfully uploaded the .txt file into zen cart.

Question though. In the readme.txt file it says,

"Any fields left blank (NULL) will not always retain the current data in your store. Best to delete unneeded columns, and use original store data as updates template"

I am only adding entries to about 12 columns out of the 24. The other entries for the other 12 columns are blank. Does this mean that I should be completing deleting those columns in the tab delimited file?

When I did my test upload, I failed to delete blank columns do this but, I don't see anything unusual that makes me think I screwed something up.

Crunch:

When I did my test upload, I failed to delete blank columns do this but, I don't see anything unusual that makes me think I screwed something up.

No, no you should be good. Once you download existing data and change some stuff in the txt file and re-upload you want to be careful and not import empty fields over existing data.

Just always backup db, do some test importing with just a few items, see if the resulting import is correct and then do your bulk. If not correct, just restore and try again. :D

It is best to delete any columns containing information that doesn't need to be updated.

for example:
When you upload your products for the first time you will need:
product model l category 1-7 l brand l prod. desc. l price l weight l etc.

for updating daily changing info like prices and stocklevels you will need:

product_model l prices l stock l

The other columns can be deleted.

Hope this helps a bit.

I've been trying to find help with the attributes file supplied with ez-populate. I cant seem to figure out how do use it. Can someone please assist. Thanks

mydanilo,

ok, so it's just a precaution to not overwrite existing data with blank data. I think I understand now. Thanks.

RamsX,

So, I am uploading about 100 new items.

The following column entries are blank for each item in the tab delimited file:

v_products_url_1, v_specials_price, v_specials_date_avail, v_specials_expires_date, v_categories_name_4, v_categories_name_5, v_categories_name_6, v_categories_name_7

Are you saying that since these items I want to upload are brand new that I need to include every column, even if the column entries are completely blank on the first upload?

Thanks.

Crunch:

Are you saying that since these items I want to upload are brand new that I need to include every column, even if the column entries are completely blank on the first upload?

No, you can delete the empty columns or any columns containing info you don't need.

RamsX:

No, you can delete the empty columns or any columns containing info you don't need.
Correct to some point. I think there are some that absolutely need to be there to make it work. I think in the wiki is some info about it.

I found it does not hurt to have all columns there if you add new products.

I am using Zen Cart v 1.3.8 My current database has about 3000 products in it. When I first set-up my store I was able to upload my products without any problems. They were uploaded in 2 groups, each about 1500 products each. Now that I have a full store, when I try to download my products I am getting the following error

500 Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.*

My host is Dreamhost and this is their reply:

"I was unable to determine the root cause of the error. Unfortunately
debugging 3rd party modules is beyond our scope of support. Your process
is not getting killed by our process monitor. Nor is anything meaningful
being reported in the apache error logs, suexec logs, etc."

I am lost as to what to do to utilize EP. Any help is greatly appreciated.

PizzaMan,

What you should try to do is use the "Create Complete tab-delimited .txt file in temp dir (Attributes Not Included)" Link.

This will put your data file in the temp directory that you can then use your ftp program to download.

Same goes for uploading to temp directory for import.

Per your download problem, have you looked at your php.ini file? There are some variables in there that you can customize to give yourself more memory and processor time.

-cj

stlnyc:

I've been trying to find help with the attributes file supplied with ez-populate. I cant seem to figure out how do use it. Can someone please assist. Thanks

Attributes do NOT work in this module. Sorry. Hopefully an up-coming release will solve that.

-cj

What you should try to do is use the "Create Complete tab-delimited .txt file in temp dir (Attributes Not Included)" Link.

This will put your data file in the temp directory that you can then use your ftp program to download.

Same goes for uploading to temp directory for import.

Chadderuski,

Thanx for the reply, however, I have tried to to do the files to the temp directory and it still does the 500 internal server error. When I only had 1500 item it worked fine, but when I got to 2500+ then it times out. Does not matter weather I download or put in temp directory.

Per your download problem, have you looked at your php.ini file? There are some variables in there that you can customize to give yourself more memory and processor time.

What do you mean? Can you explain what I would want to do.

Thanx

Hi friends,

I'm using ZC 1.38. I installed easy populate from Langer, it installed fine and could download the datbase correctly, but when I tried to upload I would get a 500 error, so now I installed, Easy Populate CSV, the latest updated in Jan 2009, which is working fine.

I need help on 2 issues which would make things easier for me.1. Download and upload the database using a semicolon";" instead of a comma "," separating the columns. in Spain we use the comma to separate the decimals in the prices, eg. (€11,50) so when I open the database it gives me the price in 2 separate columns, and also the description field commas create problems.
2. I use wholesale and retail prices and have the dual price module installed, when I downloaded the database with the langer module there was a column for the wholesale prices v_price_w , but this new version does not include it, how can I add this field to may downloads.Thanks for your help.

After reading, I am still not clear on how to not over write long product descriptions when using easy populate. I am open to using Open Office for uploading long descriptions.

I had a programming friend change a core file to protect my product descriptions temporarily but I know that is not the way to go.

Should I delete the description column in EP when uploading a global price update, will that protect my data?

Would apreaciate any help.

Johnny

pizzaman21:

Chadderuski,

Per your download problem, have you looked at your php.ini file? There are some variables in there that you can customize to give yourself more memory and processor time.

Thanx

Open your php.ini file and look for this section. You can usually bump these up, but many hosts will over ride your values if you go too high:

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Resource Limits ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

max_execution_time = 90 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
max_input_time = 90 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data
memory_limit = 64M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (10MB)

If this doesn't help, then something on the hosting side is really restricting your scripts. In shared hosting environments you are really at the mercy of the hosting provider's imposed restrictions, and the other 100's (if not 1000's !?!?!?!) of sites you are sharing your box with.

It may be time to change providers or to consider a VPS... wiredtree and knownhost both have good affordable packages (about 40/month) and superior tech support.

Hope this helps.

Oh, just a note: Once you upload your php.ini file, run a script with phpinfo() in it to make sure it accepted the changes. Some hosts cache the php.ini file and it can take "time" to update your changes.

Good Luck!
-cj

HELP PLEASE!!

I am using:
Zen Cart ver 1.3.7.1
Easy Populate ver 1.2.5.4

When I UPload EP File all my existing product records are updated just fine. Any new product records are skipped (not added to the dbase) with this message:

Model BF3 SM-No catagory provided for this new product.

The catagory structure is Shaker Maple>Base>Specialty

HOWEVER- if I add the product id:
BF3 SM to Catalog>Catagories/Products and then run Upload EP File again with the same file BF3 SM is updated correctly, but all the other new products are still skipped with the above message.

Can anybody shed any light on this?

DAFI

> Model BF3 SM-No catagory provided for this new product.

Do you have the category name in your EP file that this product is going to? That is what the error is telling you - no category for the product was listed.

Yes I have the catagory name. I have several products in the catagory.
I have since taken a download file and can change the name of the v_product_model of an existing product to the name BF3 SM and upload it. The product is then added to the database. I can find no difference in the Catagory names from this file and the one I am creating. Any ideas?