A FAST WAY TO ADD NEW PRODUCTS TO PRESTASHOP v1

[emma]

How do we add products and categories to PrestaShop in bulk?

Is there such thing as a bulk upload in PrestaShop?
i.e. to add Title, Short Descritpion, Image, Thumb, Additional Images, Weight, Cost $, Sale $, Categories, etc. (See CS-Cart for good example!)

The question "Is this a service or product?" is a bit pointless, as a Yes/No question should be phrased/changed to: "Is this a service?"

Otherwise Y/N is unknown, and will create an unknown result!

Does anyone know a way around this issue?
As i'm not really looking forward to adding 900 products (this month, and 1400 products next month) etc, each month i'm using this.

Any feedback or information on an excel sheet layout would be HIGHLY appreciated.

[TheLastLegion]

This is another big thing, adding 1 product by 1 is too long... anyway to add in bulk?

Please let me know as well

[ejectcore]

Yes via CSV import tools ;-) (although there are a few improvements needed for this feature)
http://www.prestashop.com/wiki/Importing_Product_Data/

[emma]

What I don't understand is the fact that these developers who design these applications (and i'm not just talking about PrestaShop, but also Sunshop, StoreSprite, CSCart, PrestaShop, Interspire, Virtuamart and Viart), only CSCart can handle bulk imports by either selecting a group of images and labelling, or batch creating products and adding images etc.

When the most time consuming task is importing and data transfer between programs, i just would have thought there would be some sort of 'encouragement' to shift away from your old/current eCommerce solution, to a new one, when the new application does have a lot of nice features, but then after spending 2 days fiddling, you find it really lacks major features that hinder and effect it's daily use....

Personally I don't want to add a dozen fields per item into a CSV text file, and then attempt to import to find that 50 incorrect or corrupt products have merged with the rest of our product catalogue!

I must admit I've been through all of the above solutions to find Sunshop, CSCart and PrestaShop great!
But I would have to say that regardless of price, PrestaShop still is a better product, yet it really lacks what some of the other software out there has.

If PrestaShop can improve it's importing and streamline this feature (please check out CScart bulk product tool) then we'll certainly be putting forward a yearly 'donation' for using this product.

(: (: Good work! :)

P.S. A bulk modify would be great, i.e. select 25 products, and modify 3 common fields, across all the products. (See CScart once again for an example).

Thank you and keep up the excellent work!
Well done on version 1.0 final.

Emma. (:

[emma]

Any replies, comments, suggestions or ideas are welcome!

I think having to use the CSV import is not quite practical, as not all programs can export to CSV...
Does your development team have an ETA for release of these import/export features?

It would be advatageous to find this out as we have a few large projects comeing up where we'd like to see Prestashop having a niche in our business.

Thank you.

Emma.

[jtyana]

The only options I can see at the moment are:
1. Hire a programmer to write a script to import the data - expensive
2. CSV as many fields as possible and manually fix the rest
3. Use the duplicate feature if your products share enough similar information

Unfortunately, there is still too many other features that need to be done now.
I want what you want too but alas, it's time for patience and when it finally comes out, it will be too late for us anyway

[emma]

But that's the thing...

If people can't import their existing product databases of (well ours is in excess of 14,000 items), then there is going to be little incentive to change...
Infact, people are more likely to go elsewhere; where they will be able to pay a small fee for some software, and have their own developers write the software, as they know the support is there.

I'm still struggling to find anything else that really pulls and will encourange our clients to migrate accross to a new platform. Regardless of the features, they will want to be assured that the upfront fee's are not excessive, for example: importing product database!

This feature is essential. It is in every single other piece of software out there.
If PrestaShop don't fix features that remain in their foundations, then no matter how many updates they provide and release, they just won't remain attractive as they can't complete simple tasks as import/export.

The current CSV import is not very reliable either (as i've been warned by the PrestaShop team.)

[ejectcore]

1. Hire a programmer to write a script to import the data – expensive

(depends on your exact requirements) ;-)

[jtyana]

1. Hire a programmer to write a script to import the data – expensive

(depends on your exact requirements) ;-)

Actually, you are right. With a client base to share the cost, hiring a developer would not be expensive
It comes back to - "You have to spend money to make money"
That's the wonderful thing about Open Source, we can hire developers to tailor our solution

[ejectcore]

If you PM your specification I will look into this later this week

[shutzu]

simplest way to import bulk of products i figured out by now is using phpmyadmin, with this I loaded 2000 products in 1 day.
needed tables:
ps_category_product
ps_feature_product
ps_feature_value
ps_feature_vale_lang
ps_product
ps_product_attribute
ps_product_attribute_conbination
ps_product_lang

Install the prestashop script with the default data, with phpmyadmin, export as CSV for MS excel each of these tables in separate files, and replace the default fields with yours, quite simple if you can concentrate. one small mistake might ruin your whole import

[ejectcore]

Navicat is by means the fastest method
And using this you can simply backup & restore your entire DB!

[shutzu]

but that's not free
since I didn't worked with it don't know what to say if it is or not the fastest method

[dr7tbien]

Hi. I'm working in this issue. is possible to create a script inside admin area. for example:

 

<?
include_once "path/to/config/autoload.php";



$lang_id = 1;
$active_categories = true;
$order = false;
$id_category = 2;

$cats = Category::getCategories($lang_id, $active_categories, $order);
$cat  = new Category($id_category, $lang_id);

$cat->name = "New cat name";
$cat->save();

print_r ($cats);
print_r ($cat);
?>

 

The most important line is

include_once "path/to/config/autoload.php";

This line allow use function and classes prestashop

 

I hope this can help