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Joomla CSVI Virtuemart - Any Users? (Mass Product Import)

by Steve Holmes
6 replies
Joomla forums are unresponsive so I was hoping a passing warrior here may be a Joomla expert.

I am trying to import about 1000 products into virtuemart using CSVI virtuemart and was hoping for a bit of help. I have the csv datafeed from the vendor but need to know how to configure and import it.

Any help is MUCH appreciated as I have been trying for ages.
#csvi #import #joomla #mass #product #users #virtuemart
  • Profile picture of the author AlTheGr8
    I just did a project like that for a client, imported about 25,000 products. I had to massage the data provided by the distributor. Especially if you want your visitors to be able to specify product sizes or colors (called attributes in VirtueMart). I also had to apply some VirtueMart core hacks to be able to put product images into sub-folders by category. Too many files in a single directory was causing performance problems.
    The client also upgraded to CSVI 2.1 which you have to buy a subscription for because it gives you an option to automatically split large files while importing, otherwise you will need to manually split files so you don't get time-out during import. If you only have 1000 products you shouldn't have any problems splitting the files into 2-3 chunks.
    What seems to be the problem with your import?
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Holmes
      The problem for me is converting the csv file i get from the vendor into a readable format by csvi. I can't be manually coding 1000 products and I rarely use excel so there must be a smarter way to do it.

      I also need to delete every product I have on the website along with another problem that the website is very slow.

      As the product database changes all of the time i need to learn how to do it for myself, a friend did it last time and they aren't available - trust me I asked lol
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  • Profile picture of the author AlTheGr8
    I'm sorry for being silent - crazy day today.
    CSVI is very flexible when it comes to the format it accepts, you just need to create a template (or modify an existing one) for product import and specify the fields in your input file and their order. You can also define text and field delimeters. By default CSVI uses tilde (~) as the text delimiter and carrot (^) as the field delimiter but you can change that. In fact, you will need to change that if you work with Excel because Excel isn't very flexible on the format it will produce.
    Instead of working with Excel I prefer to import the original data file into a MSSQL database and manipulate it there, for me it's easier to run SQL queries to massage the data. You could also use Excel macros to do the "massaging".
    Let me know if you need assistance.
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    • Profile picture of the author WebInt
      Hi AlTheGr8,

      I didn't find this post until now but was wondering if you could help me out. I need VM 1.1.9 to show product full images and thumbnails which are in sub-directories of the shop_image/products directory (the root VM product image folder). So far I have CSVI 3.7 working flawlessly when importing images and auto-creating thumbnails for the root VM product image directory (and its "resized" subdirectory), but can't get it to work for sub directories (the front-end or backend aren't showing any images). My method was to put the proper relative path in the product_full_image and product_thumb_image in CSVI and make sure my path was pointing to the root product image folder.

      Does this issue experienced in 1.1.5 still exist in 1.1.9? Or am I doing something wrong here. Would you be able to share which files you hacked and what the patches were if the problem still exists in 1.1.9?

      Joomla 1.5, VM 1.1.9 stable, CSVI 3.7

      Any help is greatly appreciated.

      Thanks,
      Jesse
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      • Profile picture of the author Sandra Martinez
        I didn´t play with this importer for virtuemart, but I did play with another importer for content in joomla.

        the way I managed to make it work was using calc from open office, it allows to set the markers easier and doesn´t include phantom symbols as excel does.

        it might work here as well.

        Sandra
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        • Profile picture of the author WebInt
          Hi Sandra,

          Thanks for your post. I think the issue is with the core Virtuemart code not displaying images located in sub-directories of the shop_image/product directory. It seems that a hack is required to the VM core, from what I've discovered, and I'm curious what AlTheGr8 did to accomplish that. So far I have CSVI working without issues for the root directory (shop_image/product ) and the "resized" subfolder, but not for subdirectories. It seems excel has been working okay using commas as delimiters. I have the "preview" option set in CSVI to make sure the program is reading the .csv file properly before importing to the db.

          Thanks,
          Jesse
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