Hi David,
I've fixed my import woes thanks to your help - all feeds are now importing properly with the different filters I've applied. I have a new question for you. I have two feeds that are almost identical in all products except I believe they purposely used totally different names for their products. I wouldn't mind mapping them manually in the admin area but am worried about the growth of the mapping functions. I have a field in my database that is equivalent to the UPC but both feeds don't include this number. I was wondering if I could somehow populate the required UPCs for both fields once to map them but somehow save this field so that the next time these feeds are imported the UPC is not overwritten (so that the mapping remains). What do you think?
The only other idea I have is to create some sort of efficient mapping interface that works with a database. I'm not worried about the time that it takes me as long as in the end it helps my users out. I can always get help from a friend or two when they're bored haha.
Thanks!! -Joe
Hi Joe,
How many products are you looking at featuring on your site?
Cheers,
David.
I think, it would be the best if you add a new "product reference" databasetable, where you can add the UPC and maybe some extra data for the product, maybe own pictures...and if you add the upc data there, you have to tie(add) the products of the feeds (product table) to this reference product. This product reference table should be used for product searches instead of the old products table. If you click on compare prices the product page should be build from this reference table and the as you have tied the products to this reference product all the prices of the will be displayed (grabbed from the "old" product table).
Regards,
Harry
Hi guys, thanks for the replies.
David - I'm currently at about 40,000 products so far but that's just some of the feeds on my "niche" site. I see this site growing to at least 250k. One of my other sites will easily have a lot more than that...maybe double? I'm not sure yet. Obviously I won't map all products but if a couple feeds (like the current situation) have about 1000 products each, I don't mind mapping them.
Harry - Thanks for the idea. It sounds similar to what I want to do although I find it very confusing (probably because I haven't done anything like this before). It'll probably sink in tomorrow when I'm more awake haha. Have you done something similar?
The feeds that I'm using have "unique" product identifiers (or even hashes) that each merchant uses to identify their product. I can use this to associate a UPC with the product. I can't however compare unique ID to unique ID (without a table tie-ing them together) because they will be different numbers from each merchant.
Thanks for the help guys!
-Joe
Hi David,
Quick question on this. When you import a feed (after it has already been registered), does PT delete products that it doesn't find in the feed from the database? Also, when you get rid of a feed, does PT keep the old unique numbers for each product that WAS there or does it re-assign these numbers to newly imported products?
Just trying to figure out the best way of associating data with a product in the database and the consequences of it changing in the future.
Thanks as always, it's very much appreciated! :)
-Joe
Hi Joe,
The first step of an import is to DELETE all products for that merchant - then the new feed is imported, so all the products in the database match the latest feed.
This means that products will get a new ID field in the database each time a feed is imported. Likewise, when deleting a merchant altogether, all products are deleted and the IDs freed up may be used by the database for subsequent INSERTs...
Cheers,
David.
Hello Joe,
The real problem is being able to get the script to match them up in the first place in order to set the UPC i'm afraid - that's why it's only really possible as a manual process. If you find the mapping is slowing import down or causing memory issues let me know and I'll help you look into that.
It may also be worth making a back-up of the productsmap table if you have spent a long time building your mappings. The easiest way is with the "Export" feature of phpMyAdmin - you can select just the productsmap table, and then export as a .sql file. Again, let me know if you want more help with this!
Cheers,
David.