Here is a link to a sample import csv to import products:

http://www.smith-consulting.com/forums/forumid/4/threadid/2699/scope/posts.aspx

The built in product import in the cart currently only supports importing one level of sub categories. If you need to import 3,4,5, etc sub cat levels you will have to use the sql server import wizard. Here is the current cart product import spec:

1. Category Name
2. Subcategory Name
3. Manufacturer
4. Product Sku
5. Product Name
6. Unit Cost
7. Quantity On Hand
8. Weight
9. Product Summary
10. Product Description 1
11. Product Description 2
12. Product Description 3
13. Product Description 4
14. Product Description 5
15. Thumbnail Image
16. Large Image

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At your service,
Dave Smith

I'm meeting with my client tomorrow afternoon.. I was hoping to instruct her in the proper format so she can begin working on putting the products together on her end.

Has anyone successfully mass uploaded via SQL Server when dealing with more than 1 sub-category?

Thank you,

Patrick

Just for the sake of testing I downloaded your XLS file to see how the import wizard worked for a person that only had 1 sub-category.

All the products upload but when going into the product settings I noticed it didn't assign the category.

Is this issue familiar with anyone?

Thanks,

Patrick

What application (or backend) is your client using for the master product list? Is it possible to export it to cvs, xls or xml?

The reason I ask is that it is a trivial effort to get the information to Smith Cart. Using LinqToSql, I spent about a morning to write an import export bridge to transfer product data from xBase (Clipper) via SQL to a cvs then to an xls file which can be directly uploaded using Smith Cart import. 5000 items took seconds to build the file and about 10 seconds to upload. In this case there were only 2 category levels.

I would recommend using the upload engine first, or as a second choice use LinqToSql to update Manufacturers then Categories then Products.

I'll post some example code if you are interested.

Yes. I am in the situation where my client (and I) want to mass upload not only products but also product categories, product variant groups and product variant.

I have developed the SQL to remove all product related records completely, and then, using two spreadsheets and various SQL scripts build the database from nothing. The spreadsheets are products.xls and productoptions.xls where the former is as specified in the user manual and the latter is one we developed to allow all the variants to be uploaded. On the latter there is a column where we construct an insert statement using values from the rest of the row.

If you want, we can get in touch directly and I can send you what I have. While we don't have thousands, we don't want to do all the entry through the UI for obvious reasons.

Step0-DeleteAllProducts.sql
Step1-Run Product Import from UI
Step2-PostProductLoadFix.sql
Step3-AddProductVariantGroups.sql
Step4-LinkMfr2Cats.sql
Step5-AddVariantsFromXL.sql

To get the manufacturers to act like categories, we made a category "Designers" with subcategories for each brand... hence Step4 which does a query on the manufacturer field of each product and makes a productcategory record to match. We only have two variant groups... Size and Color.

Regards,
Guy