Hi everyone,
To assist with feed set-up, in particular where building a niche site, I have created a handy "Inspector" tool to help visualise the data available within any given feed. Download for 13/03A or 14/06A, unzip and upload the file inspector.php to your /admin/ folder and then browse to /admin/inspector.php. To use, simply select the feed that you wish to inspect and submit the form. Initially, all products are displayed, paginated by the same $config_resultsPerPage setting as per regular search results:
Results can be filtered to locate an individual product by using the search box. Click the Category or Brand heading to list all categories or brands in the feed, or click an individual category or brand value to filter the current search results accordingly. Click a product name to view the full product record:
Try it live on the demo site admin area here (username: demo password: demo)
Cheers!
David
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi falmeida,
Clicking the Category or Brand heading will give you the complete category A-Z list for the feed, and then click to view products for that category, however I'm wondering if you were looking more towards using the tool for actual editing of the feed, which is not really what this is intended. Instead one would typically use this tool in a new window as an aid to setting up your Product and Category mappings (although don't forget the "Helper" tools provided as part of both).
In other words, rather than it being possible to edit feeds (which would be more appropriately performed in a tool designed for editing that particular feed format, e.g. a spreadsheet for CSV feed) if any "editing" is required then it can be applied through filters instead, the reason being is that a users do not generally have control over feeds; so if you have to make an edit, then the same edit would have to be made every time the feed is updated. Instead, using filters, effectively means you are saving the edit in place and it is applied every time you update a feed!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
what i was thinking:
add the dropdown list and when you cliked save, the product name would be added to the alternates list on category/brand mapping .
but now that you mentioned i can just open the the csv and copy the product names to the appropriate category
Hi falmedia,
I had been thinking about linking up this tool with Category / Product mapping - the scope would need to extend to the full distinct category list for the installation - I'll have a think and see what works.
All the best!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Currently you can only enter the product name to search a feed. I tried using the sku or upc, but now results were found. How can this tool be modified to return products when you enter a sku, upc, or etc for the filename of a large feed.
Hi,
To add additional fields to the search, look for the following code at line 173 (13/03A version) or line 189 (14/06A version)
$sql .= "AND name LIKE '%".database_safe($q)."%'";...and REPLACE with:
$sql .= "AND (
name LIKE '%".database_safe($q)."%'
OR sku LIKE '%".database_safe($q)."%'
OR upc LIKE '%".database_safe($q)."%'
)";Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hmm, just noodling on this one...
For those using small niche sites with product mapping, perhaps an idea would be the possibly of a drop down of all your created products next to each product in the feed, then just select which one it needs to be mapped to?
I tried above & it now gives 500 Internal Server Error when trying to load the /admin/inspector.php url.
Hi,
Replacement code corrected above - a superfluous quote had been copied over from the origin code...
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
This looks like the start of a great idea. I have used other scripts or services like Price Tapestry in the past and one of the services I used that allowed the import of datafeeds allowed me to manually add or remove products from the feed. This was invaluable when creating niche websites.
I mainly use Affiliate window at the moment and the datafeed they offer allows category feeds but not specific product searching, for example if I was running a website that specialised in "peplum dresses" and only wanted these in my feed from the likes of Boohoo I could not create a feed with Affiliate Window to do that. What I have to do is import all the data but then Im not able to only add/remove the "peplum dresses"
Could this tool be modified to have this type pf feature? Or is there another way to do this?
Thanks :)
Madz
Hello Madz, and welcome to the forum!
Perhaps the first thing to do is to make a quick mod to admin/feeds_filters.php so that you can apply filters to the Merchant field. To do this, look for the following code at line 85:
require("admin_header.php");...and REPLACE with:
require("admin_header.php");
$config_fieldSet["merchant"] = "Merchant";You'll now be able to add filters to the merchant field (global, or per feed), so if working with an Affiliate Window category feed you will be able to selectively import merchants using a Drop Record If Not RegExp filter, configured as follows;
(BooHoo|Merchant 2|Merchant 3)That's the "RegExp" - in this case a pipe separated list of the merchant names to include, all enclosed in brackets (ensure there is no superfluous white space either before or after the entire expression or individual value).
You could further restrict the import with additional Drop Record If Not RegExp filters against additional fields e.g. Product Name, where you could enter a list of keywords (the above style of regular expression would apply each value as a keyword match) or similarly against the Category field.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi David,
Thanks for the quick reply. I tried what you suggested but was not able to get it to work as you explained.
I decided to try using the script with Wordpress instead as this way I can control the posts/products that would be imported. I will give this a go and see how I get on.
Thanks,
Paul
Hi Paul,
Many users do just that - simply using PriceTapestry.org for WordPress to provide the price comparison table and affiliate links via the [pto price="Product Name"] shortcode.
Note that when using the plugin in this way you don't need to have the "Shopping" page published (or even created).
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi David
Would it be possible to add the option to browse to a local feed file and/or feed URL to this tool or a seperate tool for each method. Many years back you let me have a copy script similar to your magic parser demo which is what i'm looking at adding to this tool to avoid registering before checking.
Thanks
Chris
Hi Chris,
If you'd like to forward to me the admin/feeds_register_step2.php from the installation where you'd like to browse records before registering I'll back-port the pagination featured from the latest version of that file for you.
This will allow you to browse records exactly like the Magic Parser demo, the only difference being the need to "Next" on to Feed Registration Step 2 assuming that format auto-detection is correct...
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi David,
Please could you confirm the link for the inspector.php tool for 14_06A. I just tried the above but it just links to the full install download.
Thanks in advance.
Best regards
Chris
Hi Chris,
I've restored the download links above...
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hello David,
This script not work with latest PT version?
Thanks,
Marco Saiu
Hello Marco,
Equivalent functionality is built in to the latest distribution - from /admin/ go to Tools > Feed Utilities and use Imported Analysis for the feed you want to inspect...
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi david
Is it possible to modify this tool and add a drop down list for categories and brands and add a save button ?