The documentation below is just a sample of the documentation included with eCommerce Import. Much more documentation including XML examples is included with the add-on.
Use the eCommerce Import add-on to import customers, products, order and other data into your Concrete5 web site. This panel explains how to use the import functionality.
Additional detailed information is available for each import object type. Select the object type you want to import and click the 'Begin Import' button above. Detailed help and example XML files are shown at the bottom of the page.
To begin importing select the type of object you want to import and then click the 'Begin Import' button. The eCommerce Import add-on can import the following object types:
When you import products you will typically want to import a photograph or image for each product. The eCommerce Import add-on will pull images from a given directory. Follow these steps to set up the images in preparation for your product import:
As with product imports and product images, when you import pages you will typically have some basic content you will want to include with each page. Place the content for each page in its own file then upload the content files into a directory. Use the 'Page Content Directory Path' to tell the eCommerce Import add-on where to find these files. Follow these steps to set up the content files:
XML is a very flexible way for describing data, but some characters have a special meaning in XML. Watch out for the following characters in your XML files (especially in product names and descriptions):
Name -- Character -- HTML Entity/Notes
Ampersand -- & -- &
Greater Than -- > -- >
Less Than -- < -- <
Apostrophe -- ' -- '
Quote -- " -- "
Other non-ASCII characters (see notes)
XML only supports the above named entities. All other entities must be encoded numerically. For example, to include the British pound character in your XML you would use the entity £
Another way to prevent problems with the XML parser to enclose your text in a CDATA section. Data in a CDATA will not be parsed by the XML parser. A CDATA section starts with "<![CDATA[" and ends with "]]>". For example:
<product>
<name>Some Product</name>
<description><![CDATA[It's okay to have apostrophes and other special characters.]]></description>
:
</product>
Import products by following these steps:
Products may be safely imported even if the product already exists in the database. When products are imported the eCommerce Import add-on checks to see if a product with a matching name or other attribute value already exists. If the product exists, only the attributes specified in the import file are used to overwrite the existing settings. You can for example update the descriptions of products by importing an XML file with only the names and descriptions of the products you want to change. The only exceptions to this are custom pages types and product options. If you specify a custom product page type the old product page will be deleted and a new one created. See the 'Options' help for information about updating a product with product options.
By default eCommerce Import uses the product name to uniquely identify products. You can use another text attribute as the unique identifier by selecting that attribute in the 'Attribute Used to Uniquely Identify Products' drop down. All of of the products being imported must have a value for this attribute defined in the XML or the import for those products that don't will fail.
Select either 'Attributes' or 'Options' from the dropdown above for more information about product attributes and options.
Q: How do I convert a CSV file to the XML format used by eCommerce Import
A: eCommerce Import offers two ways to convert CSV files to XML:
Q: Is it possible to use eCommerce Import to import data in formats other than XML or to pull the data directly from a database?
A: The code that creates and updates products (and other objects supported by Import) is written as a concrete5 helper class. If you have PHP programming skills you can write your own script to read the data, convert it to a PHP array, and then have Import manage the complicated product creation and updating part of the work.
Q: How do I use eCommerce Import to import pages and users if I don't have the eCommerce add-on?
A: The eCommerce portions of Import may be disabled by adding the following line to your site.php file:
define('CORE_COMMERCE_IMPORT_CC_CORE', false);