Hi Dave,
I have some issues that I hope you can help with:
1. Some stores have multiple feed files. When I tried to register multiple feed files under the same name, I got an error. The system wants me to name the store differently, which won't make sense as the feeds are all from the same store. Do you have any idea how I can get around this problem (other than merging feed files into one).
2. How can I include shipping & tax and compute a new baseline price so that prices are sorted according to the bottomline price?
3. How can I include Amazon prices directly into the price comparison listing (Rather than just showing in the end). Amazon.com has excellent reviews and other product info. Do you have plans to incorporate this into the product pages? If not, do you have an automated script to generate product feeds from Amazon.com? The script will take a list of ASINS and generate product feeds based on that.
That is all for now.
Thanks,
Matt
Hi David,
Is there away of incorporating the Amazon prices directly in to prices.php?
Hi,
If it could be guaranteed that the top result from Amazon was the same product then it would be straight forward to apply the API code to the prices table to do that; however in most cases the API is returning several results; based on whatever is returned from Amazon for the keywords (where the keywords are the product name).
I'd be inclined not to try that as it could be mis-leading for users, and direct traffic away, but if you have a look at the number 1 result from Amazon on your pages and it looks like it would be OK i'll help you out with that.
The other option of course is to change amazon.php to display the results in the same format as the prices table rather than search results.
To do this, in amazon.php, first look for the following code on line 119:
print "<div class='searchresults'>";...and REPLACE that with:
print "<div class='prices'>";And then within the record handler function, look for the following block of code (where each item is displayed) beginning at line 22:
print "<tr>";
print "<td>";
print "<img width='80' src='".$item["SMALLIMAGE/URL"]."' />";
print "</td>";
print "<td width='50'> </td>";
print "<td valign='middle'>";
print "<h4><a href='".$item["DETAILPAGEURL"]."'>".$item["ITEMATTRIBUTES/TITLE"]."</a></h4>";
print "<p>".$description."</p>";
print "</td>";
print "<td width='50'> </td>";
print "<td valign='middle' align='center'>";
print $config_currencyHTML.tapestry_decimalise($item["OFFERSUMMARY/LOWESTNEWPRICE/FORMATTEDPRICE"])."<br />";
print "<nobr><a href='".$item["DETAILPAGEURL"]."'>More Information</a></nobr>";
print "</td>";
print "</tr>";...and REPLACE that with:
print "<tr>";
print "<td>Amazon</td>";
print "<td>".$item["ITEMATTRIBUTES/TITLE"]."</td>";
print "<td>".$config_currencyHTML.tapestry_decimalise($item["OFFERSUMMARY/LOWESTNEWPRICE/FORMATTEDPRICE"])."</td>";
print "<td><a href='".$item["DETAILPAGEURL"]."'>Visit Store</a></td>";
print "</tr>";If you're displaying Amazon results on search.php and products.php, you might want to make separate versions, say calling this one amazonProducts.php, and then call this version from products.php and the original from search.php.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.
Hi David,
Sorry to butt in on this, but this interest me, firstly, can I request the patch to consolidate feeds from the same merchant please?
In relation to the amazon results, I know you've helped me with this previously, but are you saying that doing the above would allow you to list the amazon product by value in order if there is only 1 amazon result returned?
As on a number of my sites we have limited the amazon result to show one product only, but I have it as a separate row at the bottom of the list of other products, so there would be an enormous benefit to have it included in the rest of the table in priced order.
Regards
Paul
Hi Paul,
Sure - i'll email you regarding the multi-merchant patch;
Regarding the Amazon results; if you are happy that the single result is always going to be the product featured on the page; then yes it would be straight forward to merge the Amazon result with the Price Comparison table (in price order, shouldn't be too difficult). I wouldn't recommend doing this if the results aren't specific enough...
If you want to have a look at that, if you could email me your existing amazon.php, products.php and html/prices.php i'll take a look for you...
Cheers,
David.
I'm interested in including the top Amazon hit along with the others in the Price Comparison table also. I was planning to make a second amazon.php for this purpose while keeping a the original amazon.php at the bottom for less accurate search results. How do I pull the top result in the comparison table?
Thank you,
Wayman Luy
Hello Wayman,
I actually came up with a really straight forward way to implement this recently. Create a second amazon.php as you suggest; but then instead of it creating any output; it simply loads the top Amazon result into an array; and then a simple modification to html/prices.php displays that result at the correct place in price order.
If you could start by emailing me your amazon.php and html/prices.php i'll make the changes for you as whilst it's not much code (in fact more is removed than added) it's not particularly easy to describe.
Cheers,
David.
I haven't signed up with Amazon (yet). Do they not offer a product feed of any description?
Thanks,
Craig
Hi Craig,
They don't i'm afraid - their product range is so vast that a product feed would not be practical, which is why Amazon prefer affiliate interaction with them via the API - which ensures that the very latest prices are always available for specific queries based on a defined search index.
Cheers,
David.
Hi David,
I'd like the multiple feed per merchant patch as well please.
Thanks, Jon
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Hi Jon,
I notice that you've been a user for over a year - assuming that you've made several changes throughout your site it would be easier for me to merge the mod into your existing files - as the patch would overwrite the changes - so if you wanted to email me the following files:
merchants.php
includes/admin.php
admin/feeds_register_step2.php
Alternatively, if you're starting a new project, don't forget that the latest distribution of Price Tapestry contains multiple-merchant support already so it may be best to start with that base!
Cheers,
David.
Thanks David, I didn't realize that was included in the new version as I've just started using it. Thanks for the quick response.
Cheers, Jon
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Hello Matt,
Re: 1)
I will email you a patch to incorporate support for multiple feeds for the same merchant (or multiple merchants in a single feed). It will involve re-creating the database i'm afraid as everything is keyed by filename rather than merchant name; but it will give you the flexibility required.
Re: 2)
Before going too far down this road; make sure that you have shipping and tax info available for all merchants; as this can become rather complicated. If at all possible, it is best left as gross price comparison; shipping and tax are generally best left to ecommerce packages / handled at the store checkout (as tax can vary of course depending on buyer location). However, what it involves is adding any other fields that you require based on the instructions in the following thread / comment;
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/313#comment-1210
If you decide to go down that route; let me know once you have added the shipping and tax fields (or of course if you need help with that) and help you incorporate the values into the price comparison tables. It can get quite complex quite quickly i'm afraid...!
(I would recommend waiting until you've installed the multi-merchant patch as this will make changes to the database itself)
Re: 3)
If you haven't done so already - don't forget the Amazon API script that you can use to complement the search results or product pages with live Amazon results...
Cheers,
David.