Feed category help

Submitted by JasonG on Tue, 2011-07-26 11:51 in Price Tapestry

Hi,

I have a merchant feed in (|) format I need to the merchant_category is in this format "Dog Shop > Dog Beds & Baskets > Cozy Dog Collection > Animal-Shaped Beds"

How can get this into price tapestry with the main category and sub categories Dog Shop > Dog Beds & Baskets > Cozy Dog Collection > Animal-Shaped Beds

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help

Regards
Jason

Hi Jason, By default the

Submitted by support on Tue, 2011-07-26 12:10

Hi Jason,

By default the PIPE character (and also & and hyphen) would actually be removed from the category values so I suspect they are being imported as something like;

Dog Shop Dog Beds Baskets Cozy Dog Collection AnimalShaped Beds

The first step would be to permit these characters in the normalisation of the category during import - I know you've been using the software for several years now but first locate where the category value is "normalised" by this code at line 166 (11/09A):

$importRecord["category"] = tapestry_normalise($importRecord["category"]);

...and REPLACE with:

$importRecord["category"] = tapestry_normalise($importRecord["category"],"|&\-");

(the backslash is required in-front of the hyphen as it has a special meaning with regular expressions which is how the normalisation is applied)

With that in place, you can now add a Search and Replace filter to the Category field for this feed, search for "|" (without the quotes), replace with ">" - re-import, and that should do the trick...

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Thanks David I manually

Submitted by JasonG on Thu, 2011-08-04 10:13

Thanks David

I manually manipulated the file but now have this option it will mean I can import each time withought doing the manual work first.

I assume this will allow me to have main category and sub categories in the price comparison (I posted another post) about this earlier today so apologies if the answer to the 2 questions would be the same or similar!

Regards
Stuart

Hi Stuart, Bear in mind that

Submitted by support on Thu, 2011-08-04 10:30

Hi Stuart,

Bear in mind that Price Tapestry doesn't support a category hierarchy - which is a conscious decision made based on the limited available of good quality hierarchical category information and I feel most users would be unsatisfied with the results, particularly when working with many feeds from different merchants all with their own ways of providing category information. Even the way top level category info is provided varies considerably, but the latest developments with the Category Mapping (and it's helper tool) make it relatively easy to create a nice category index for your site.

Having said that, the above mod should have let you import category values, literally, taking the modified value from the feed; e.g.

Top Level Cat > Sub Cat 1 > Sub Cat 2 > Cat

...and this should appear neatly on the category A-Z index...

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com

Hi David When you say the

Submitted by fstore on Thu, 2011-08-04 13:02

Hi David

When you say the above mod with let him import category value as below

Top Level Cat > Sub Cat 1 > Sub Cat 2 > Cat

Does it mean there will be 4 separate categories imported (i.e. 1-Top Level, 2- Subcat 1, 3- Sub cat 2, 4-Cat)?

or this be still one category with name as "Top Level Cat > Sub Cat 1 > Sub Cat 2 > Cat"

shouldn't it be the later case?

regards

Hello Hassan, Yes - it is

Submitted by support on Thu, 2011-08-04 13:08

Hello Hassan,

Yes - it is the latter; Price Tapestry only maintains a single category level...

Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com