Using ProductCart - XML Tools Brands/Categories & Database question

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XML Tools Brands/Categories & Database question

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Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Using ProductCart
Forum Description: Running your store with ProductCart
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=2880
Printed Date: 21-November-2024 at 6:07pm
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Topic: XML Tools Brands/Categories & Database question

Posted By: Wayne Cornish
Subject: XML Tools Brands/Categories & Database question
Date Posted: 16-July-2009 at 1:33pm

Dear All,

We are developing/modifying ProductCart to be able to automatically update our 1000's products, stocklevels & pricing using the XML tools, there seems to be 2 big questions that are raised by this:

1. Can you add a Brand using the XML tools (This is not crucial as we could do it manually although a bit of a pain as all of the above can done automatically by our back end systems). I can't see anywhere about manually importing brands either. We currently have 53 brands with logos etc.

2. Can you add a category using the XML tools, this would cause us a big problem as we pay for all of our product content information that has a total of 890 categories/sub categories and they can be added to by our content provider so being able to update them automatically would be very useful. My fear is a new product becomes available and our systems try and add it and it has a new category, will the XML tools just put it in the root category?

I'm guessing if the answers to the above is no I'm guessing we will have to write our own xml import tools which raises another question as we already have brand ID's & Category ID's that will not match ProductCarts autonumbering system is there anything really bad about adding an aditional field to ProductCart's Brand table & categories table as it seems slightly pointless having 2 additional tables just to do lookups to our ID's.

Sorry for the long questions, I'm just rying to save having to write yet another XML import/export parser.

Wayne

Replies:

Posted By: Matt
Date Posted: 17-July-2009 at 3:44pm

1. There is currently no method for adding a Brand.

2. If you add the Category Details to the XML it should generate the category.

3. You could extend the XML Tools by adding a new method "AddBrand". I would need more information to consult you about the Brand IDs. You will be better served by discussing the issue in full detail with your programmer. The XML Tools files are encrypted so you will need to open a ticket if you have a special request for the source code.

Posted By: Wayne Cornish
Date Posted: 21-July-2009 at 4:56am

Thanks for the reply Matt (by the way I am the developer),

Think we will have to put in a ticket for the source as there are several features we would like to add to the XML tools and it would be nice to integrate them into the existing set, rather than having a seperate bolt-on set of tools. The parsers are not that different from the ones we have already had to write in asp for our own content backend systems.

Just as a point of interest we are planning on doing the following:

As all of product content already contains Brand ID's & Product ID's (different from our SKU's) we are going to have to be able to callback/query the Brand ID's and Category ID's so that our update systems can give them the correct ProductCart ID's. We also have to update approx. 50,000 prices and stock levels nightly the long description alone for each product is over 1Mb including formatting for tabs). Therefore we are writing the following XML tools:

Following gives us full Brand control
1. AddBrand (AddBrandResponse returns BrandID)
2. SearchBrands
3. GetBrandDetails
4. UpdateBrand

Following gives us full category control
5. AddCategory (AddCategoryResponse returns CategoryID)
6. SearchCategories
7. GetCategoryDetails
8. UpdateCategory

Following gives us the ability to quickly update our stock levels/price at around 1Kb per item instead of 1Mb per item.
10.GetShortProductDetails (GetShortProductDetailsResponse returns SKU, Price, ListPrice, WholesalePrice, Stock, IsActive, Cost)
11.UpdateShortProductDetails (Updates SKU, Price, ListPrice, WholesalePrice, Stock, IsActive, Cost)

Wayne

Posted By: nav216
Date Posted: 18-February-2013 at 7:01am

Are these elements now available or do we need to use any other elements to add categories:

1. AddCategory (AddCategoryResponse returns CategoryID)
2. SearchCategories
3. GetCategoryDetails
4. UpdateCategory

Early reply would be highly appreciated.

Posted By: nav216
Date Posted: 19-February-2013 at 7:19am

Anybody, please help me in how to add categories in product cart.

Posted By: nav216
Date Posted: 21-February-2013 at 8:06am

How can I add categories using XML tools through XML requests?

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 21-February-2013 at 10:43am

It appears that adding categories via the XML toolset is not supported.

We have experience altering those tools, such as we built complete support for adding "apparel products" and "additional images" support to that system, along withi other functions.

If you would like us to build support for your requirement, please contact me directly.

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