Import category fields from CSV

Imar Spaanjaars

Posted on 20/12/2016 14:50:42

Hi there,

I have a CSV file in the following format:

Product ID      Height      Width      Metric
1234            123 234    Yes
2345            456 100    Yes
9033            190 200    No

In reality, I have many different CSV files with many columns, all that differ per CSV.

I would like to import this data to Product Category fields. What is the best solution to do this? If I use CSV => EcomProvider, I need to an import job per column per CSV file which is an awful lot of work. I tried creating multiple table mappings to the same source within a job (so I could map Height, Width and Metric all in one go) but it's only picking up the first table mapping. Even if this would work, it would be a lot of work to set up.

Any suggestions? Should I convert my data to some other format (i.e. row based per product/column combination) and if so, has anyone done that before and would like to share the implementation?

Thanks!

Replies

Dmitriy Benyuk

Posted on 21/12/2016 09:26:51

Hi Imar,
the Product Category fields import was implemented in XML->Ecom provider scenario in tfs# 26772.
So you can create category fields in some category on the fly by defining them in the config section:
<config>
<categoryField id="CategoryField1" templateTag="CategoryField1Tag" label="Category Field1" categoryId="MyCategory" typeId="1" />
<categoryField id="CategoryField2" templateTag="CategoryField2Tag" label="Category Field2" categoryId="MyCategory" typeId="1" />
</config>
this will create MyCategory if it donesn't exist and will create two category fields in it.

Then in Ecom provider you should have a mapping to "EcomProductCategoryFieldValue" table with columns mappings:
FieldValueFieldId, FieldValueProductId OR FieldValueProductNumber (also but not required FieldValueProductLanguageId - if not present will use DefaultLangiageID, FieldValueProductVariantId - if not present blank value is used)

Also a feature for multiple files import to the same destination table is going to be implemented for XML -> SQL/Dynamicweb/Ecom in tfs# 28696 for 9.2 release.

Regards, Dmitrij

Imar Spaanjaars

Posted on 21/12/2016 10:47:35

Hi Dmitriy,

Thanks for that. Although very useful information, it doesn't address the original topic. I have a CSV file, not an XML file. And I think the biggest issue I have is the fact that my category fields are columns, not rows. It would be great if we had some kind of provider that I could point to my CSV file and then tell it to treat each column as a category field so I don't have to create rows first. Does that sound reasonable?

For the time being, is there something you can recommend to make this work? I can supply you a sample CSV if that's helpful?

Dmitriy Benyuk

Posted on 21/12/2016 11:21:11

Hi Imar,
yes, that is not implemented.
For now I can see some ways like this:
CSV -> XML -> write XSLT to make suitable rows -> import to Ecom
Or
some own csutom app that transforms CSV column based to CSV/XML row based

Scott Forsyth

Posted on 12/12/2017 01:20:27

I would like to add my vote to this too. It came up a couple times recently and it's very time consuming for us to pivot the table from an Excel spreadsheet. It would be great for a provider to take care of all of that plumbing.

I would envision that it would have to be something like this:

A provider called ProductCategoryField Provider
The table choices would actually be Product Categories (e.g. Clothing)
The left-hand side would be the columns in the source (e.g. Excel columns, like Material or Style)
The right-hand side would be the Product Category Fields (also like Material or Style)

This would be very a great addition and something that we would put to good use.

Scott

You must be logged in to post in the forum

Developer forum

Import category fields from CSV

Replies