Automation Questions

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   I have a question about automation.
I have seen stores with 20,000 to 40,000 products in them and the distributor offers a data feed with updates on the prices and new products. I am considering setting up an account with them and opening a new store.
1) How would you pull the information into your cart that the distributor has available so that prices would get updated and new products added?

Chris

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chris_b Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 30-June-2006 Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote chris_b Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Automation Questions Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:06pm
	I have a question about automation. I have seen stores with 20,000 to 40,000 products in them and the distributor offers a data feed with updates on the prices and new products. I am considering setting up an account with them and opening a new store. 1) How would you pull the information into your cart that the distributor has available so that prices would get updated and new products added? Chris

Greg Dinger Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Certified ProductCart Developers Joined: 23-September-2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 238	Post Options Post Reply Quote Greg Dinger Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:24pm
	I have a client running a different cart, but he has a distributor that does have a data feed that identifies available products as well as price changes. We wrote a script that when pointed at this price change feed will identify the before/after values. That script could just as easily (and will eventually for that client) write the results to a file that can be processed as an update against the product database. So let's say this script is altered to identify which are new products, and which are price changes, that it outputs either a single XLS (Or a pair at your preference) which would be formatted according to the needs of the product import tool. And since you regularly use that tool, you know just what to do next - upload and post against either of your stores. There will be some performance issues, of course, in terms of dealing with such a large file, but I've already stress tested the current script with at least 5000 records in the download from the distributor and it played just fine.

ProductCart Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Admin Group ProductCart Team Joined: 01-October-2003 Status: Offline Points: 135	Post Options Post Reply Quote ProductCart Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:24pm
	Hi Chris, you would probably want to look at using the XML Tools: http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/xml/ The tools allow a third party to update information in the ProductCart database without user interaction. If you business partner is not able to create an XML data feed that ProductCart can take in, then you would have to hire a developer to create an application in between that would take the data and re-format it.
	The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart shopping cart software

chris_b Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 30-June-2006 Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote chris_b Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:54pm
	Thanks Greg, I will touchbase with you on this. EI, two of the distributors that we buy from have the data feed in xml format. I see a lot of people talking about it, but not a lot of information on the specifics of how it all works, especially fo those of us without any programming knowledge! Chris