Is there a good tutorial somewhere on working with XML product importing in Ubercart? I've been busting my chops trying to get it right, but it's just not working.
Thu, 08/21/2008 - 17:34
Lack of flow...
There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on this forum...
Well, for whoever is interested -> I wasn't able to load the XML data of my products without 'unique_hash'es. Once I added these they loaded fine. I'm not sure whether a unique hash is required - but it doesn't seem like something I can just "cook-up". So, for anyone who struggles you can go here -> http://gdataonline.com/makehash.php <- to create 'unique_hash'es for your products individually. It is a bit of a pain if you have a large catalogue; but I've found no better way of doing it.
Creating XML data from an Excel Spreadsheets is also relatively simple -> If anyone is interested I'll pass the tip along.
Francois wrote:There doesn't
There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on this forum...
Don't you think it's a little unreasonable to complain about inactivity, less than 6 hours after your original post?
In any case, if you Search this site for "XML Import" there are quite a few threads that discuss the issue, including what the unique hash is and how to calculate it. There is also an XML schema posted showing you which fields are required and which aren't. That said, this information is scattered all around the site and it would be nice if someone (you?) could bring it together and create a Book page under the documentation section that describes the process in detail.
It would be great if you could report any bugs you found, so that they can be identified and fixed.
Huh?
6 hours? It felt like days. I haven't posted here much, so I have no idea what the usual response time is.
As far as documenting the step by step - I'm most definitely doing that. This is a great feature if I could get it to work.
Bugs - if I found any I would obviously report them -> the only problem is, since I'm not exactly sure how it's meant to work I'm not always sure whether there's a bug or whether it's just my XML that's screwy.
XML import
Hi Francois,
Just to give you an update, I have done some work on the uc_importer module and have it mostly running under D6.
Once I have tested it on my own uploads, I will send you the code and you can test it further.
I get the impression you are like me and would like it to work without having to hand code SQL statements =) Hopefully it will be sorted by the end of this week, although I need to check with spydor as he is in charge of the upgrade.
Stewart Anstey
Newcastle, Australia
Re: XML import
Actually, I myself gave a try to the node_import module with the ubercart product extension, and it works fantastically.
Imported everything, even image db entries!! Fantastic stuff 
Mapping extra fields
How did you map the price while importing to the UC price field?
(Views can see all the available fields ok; price, etc)
using drupal 5.10, UC and node_import-5.x-1.6
<<
This answers my question:
http://www.ubercart.org/contrib/5221
uc_product.inc is the support file for node_import
Interested
Could you post your tip? It would be very appreciated as I'll have loads of Products in an Excel sheet next week to import. Thanks in advance!
Excel to XML export.
Hi Claye, sorry but I've been travelling and forgot to check back on this post. Not sure if you still need it, but I'll post it anyway.
- Create 2 products in Ubercart. (You will need 2 to create an XML map for Excel.)
- Export using http://www.yoursite.com/admin/store/products/export
- Using the UCBrowser select a category.
- Select the products in the "Select a Product" pane by double clicking on them individually.
- Click Export - the file will be saved to your default download location ex. Desktop as -exmaple-tmp-php-uc_export.xml
- Open your xml file in a XML editor as UTF-8 for cleanup - the file is exported with no line breaks. On my Mac I use the open source XML Spear.
- (Note: Excel seems to have trouble with complex XML - you can experiment to see if you can get more than single depth data per product.)
- Once you've clean up your XML you can follow the following tutorial on Youtube to prepare and export your data from Excel to XML. - Convert Excel Spreadsheet data to XML
EXAMPLE XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<store xmlns="http://www.ubercart.org" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.ubercart.org http://www.ubercart.org/files/store.xsd">
<vocabularies>
<vocabulary> <!-- NOTE: Adds Vocabulary or Uses your existing Vocabulary - depending on whether it exists or not -->
<id>1</id>
<name>Catalog</name>
<description/>
<relations>0</relations>
<hierarchy>2</hierarchy>
<multiple>1</multiple>
<required>0</required>
<tags>0</tags>
<weight>0</weight>
<nodes>Trousers</nodes>
<nodes>product</nodes>
</vocabulary>
</vocabularies>
<categories> <!-- NOTE: Adds Category or Uses your existing Category - depending on whether it exists or not -->
<category>
<id>1</id>
<vid>1</vid>
<name>Trousers</name>
<description>Trousers</description>
</category>
</categories>
<classes> <!-- NOTE: Adds Classes or Uses your existing Classes - depending on whether it exists or not -->
<class>
<id>Trousers</id>
<name>Trousers</name>
<description>Two Legged Apparel</description>
</class>
</classes>
<products>
<product> <!-- NOTE: This indicates the beginning of product 1 -->
<unique_hash>cba7757acb241509ff360a155951453a</unique_hash> <!-- NOTE: Some argue that you don't need this. I found it worked better if each product had a unique hash. You can make these up. They have to be 32 characters long but can be sequential if you want. Ex. mycollection00000000000000000001 and mycollection00000000000000000002 etc. as long as they're unique. -->
<id>4</id> <!-- NOTE: You can remove this line if you want. Drupal will create a new ID anyway -->
<type>trousers</type>
<name>Product 1</name>
<description>Denim with long legs</description>
<model>G0087</model> SKU #
<list_price>100</list_price>
<cost>100</cost>
<sell_price>200.00</sell_price>
<default_qty>1</default_qty>
<shippable>1</shippable>
<image>
<path>http://localhost:8888/localhost/clothingrus/files/col_4_1.jpg</path>
<alt>Denim with long legs</alt>
<title>Product 1</title>
</image>
</product>
<product> <!-- NOTE: This indicates the beginning of product 2 -->
<unique_hash>cba7757acb241509ff360a155951453a</unique_hash> <!-- NOTE: Some argue that you don't need this. I found it worked better if each product had a unique hash. You can make these up. They have to be 32 characters long but can be sequential if you want. Ex. mycollection00000000000000000001 and mycollection00000000000000000002 etc. as long as they're unique. -->
<id>5</id> <!-- NOTE: You can remove this line if you want. Drupal will create a new ID anyway -->
<type>trousers</type>
<name>Product 2</name>
<description>Denim with short legs</description>
<model>G0085</model> SKU #
<list_price>100</list_price>
<cost>100</cost>
<sell_price>200.00</sell_price>
<default_qty>1</default_qty>
<shippable>1</shippable>
<image>
<path>http://localhost:8888/localhost/clothingrus/files/col_4_1.jpg</path>
<alt>Denim with long legs</alt>
<title>Product 1</title>
</image>
</product>
</products>
</store>
<!-- You will find other <tags></tags> keep those you'll use and discard those you won't.
With Single Depth Data I mean:
<product>
<data></data>
<data></data>
<data></data>
</product>
In the above example you'll see that images has a larger depth. Excel might have problems exporting this, but you can experiment and see if you can get it to work.
-->
Things to Remember
- The XML tags must stay in the order they were exported to import correctly into Ubercart. The Ubercart XML schema description is here
- Since Ubercart requires a specific order of tags your Excel spreadsheet's columns will need to be in that specific order as well.
- XML is very sensitive - case sensitive, order sensitive etc. Make sure everything is 100% perfect.
What you'll need to import the data into XML
<!-- Copy your XML file and remove everything until you're left with only something like the following (This will be your XML Map for Excel from now on - Save it somewhere! -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<store>
<products>
<product>
<unique_hash>cba7757acb241509ff360a155951453a</unique_hash>
<type>trousers</type>
<name>Product 1</name>
<description>Denim with long legs</description>
<model>G0087</model> SKU #
<list_price>100</list_price>
<cost>100</cost>
<sell_price>200.00</sell_price>
<default_qty>1</default_qty>
<shippable>1</shippable>
<image>
<path>http://localhost:8888/localhost/clothingrus/files/col_4_1.jpg</path>
<alt>Denim with long legs</alt>
<title>Product 1</title>
</image>
</product>
<product>
<unique_hash>cba7757acb241509ff360a155951453a</unique_hash>
<id>5</id>
<type>trousers</type>
<name>Product 2</name>
<description>Denim with short legs</description>
<model>G0085</model> SKU #
<list_price>100</list_price>
<cost>100</cost>
<sell_price>200.00</sell_price>
<default_qty>1</default_qty>
<shippable>1</shippable>
<image>
<path>http://localhost:8888/localhost/clothingrus/files/col_4_1.jpg</path>
<alt>Denim with long legs</alt>
<title>Product 1</title>
</image>
</product>
</products>
</store>
<!-- After the export from Excel copy <products>...</products> back into the original cleaned up XML file (the first version not the cleared XML Map version) effectively replacing the original -->
IMPORTANT NOTE: Excel for Mac (2008 or earlier) can not do this. You will need a Windows copy. 
Importing the Excel Data
This is as easy going to http://www.yoursite.com/admin/store/products/import selecting the file and clicking "Okay."
Note: Depending on the size of your XML file this can take a good long time 
Images will have to be copied by hand (mouse, or input device of choice) to the folder specified in path.
And that's it.
RECAP
- Export
- Cleanup using XML editor
- Prep for Excel Map
- Follow instructions from Youtube
- Copy and Paste Products
- Import
Step 7
Complex XML doesn't make sense for bulk processing and importing of data/products because it's complicated
Excel can't save "lists of lists"
If you apply attributes or categories to products and then export the xml file, opening it in excel as a list will give you tables within tables or lists within lists.
You can see these if you go to
Data > XML > XML Source
If you try to save the file it's not exportable. If you remove the other elements by right clicking each tree and hitting remove you essentially clean them up. (You must save as data not spreadsheet)
You'd also then have you remove a bunch of "ns1:"s and one "ns1".
(Note: Excel seems to have trouble with complex XML - you can experiment to see if you can get more than single depth data per product.)
What if we flatten the xml schema maybe in the xsd file and probably in the module too?
Basically attributes and categories need to be columns not rows.
Fatal Error
I tried to export my 2 products and I get a Fatal Error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function ubrowser() in /home/os2010/public_html/sitedomain.net/home/modules/uc_importer/uc_importer.module on line 315
Any Ideas what may be causing this or what I can do to correct it?
BTW: I got uc_importer for Durpal 6.x Get it Here: http://drupal.org/files/issues/uc_importer.zip
XML Import
Francois,
You are right to ask, the importer is not as straight forward as it makes out to be!
I have looked at the importer module code and there are a few problems that need addressing (eg fails when certain XML nodes are not present).
I am working on some fixes that I hope to have done by Monday. I am also going to try to update the importer code to run on Drupal 6.
Regards,
tip
Hi,
You probably wont find a one size fits all import module for Drupal, because you can add so many things on to a node, even the default product node. I will be adding to it freetagging etc.
For this reason, the best if you first build a node prototype, and in the end you turn on the devel module and create a test content item. Once done you take a note of all the inserts / updates Drupal is doing which queries get captured by devel.
After that you write your own php mysql insert script.
This weekend I just migrated a massive site with 300 000 nodes, and 2 200 000 million terms with this method... Probably will write it up for Drupal forum as well.
And now I am on to creating a massive store with Ubercart 
Ubercart Import/Export
Hello,
When I visit
http://www.yoursite.com/admin/store/products/export
It defaults to a list of my products with no place to choose a file to import?
Am I missing a particular module to allow import/export?
I am using drupal 6.9 with latest version of ubercart.
How can I enable this functionality?
Thanks.
XML export
Attempting to follow Francois' protocol - I had the same experience as marcellod. Also Drupal 6.9 and Ubercart 2.
Re: XML export
uc_importer is not included yet (Ubercart 2.0-beta5) as far as I can tell. Which is why the admin/store/products/import and admin/store/products/export actions do not resolve to anything else than admin/store/products.
I haven't looked into to the roadmap for Ubercart 2.0, so I can't tell you if this is left out for good, or if the good people from Ubercart just haven't got around to porting it yet. They are releasing new stuff at great speed, so I guess they are working pretty hard
I need this module for Ubercart 2 as well so I started looking into porting it yesterday - not gooing all that great yet, but will let you know if I succeed
Re: Re: XML export
I am afraid that I have run into a dead end with upgrading to Drupal 6
It seems that the uc_importer module relies heavily on a 'xml_importer' hook to do the actual import work for the various data-types, e.g.:
module_invoke_all('xml_importer', 'vocabulary', taxonomy_get_vocabulary($id_map['vocabularies'][(int)$vocabulary_data->id[0]->data()]), $vocabulary_data, $store, $id_map);
module_invoke_all('xml_importer', 'product', $product, $product_data, $store, $id_map);
module_invoke_all('xml_importer', 'store', $store, $id_map);I can't find any implementations of this hook in either Drupal 5 nor Ubercart 1. How this has ever worked in UC1 is beyond me. If any body can point out what I am missing it would be much appreciated.
I am now able to import products in UC 2 / Drupal 6
After a few days of hard work, I am finally able to make a product import to my UC 2 site, using the uc_importer from UC 1 as a starting point.
I have had to change quite a lot to make it work, and I am aware of several issues, that I haven't given much attention because they concern modules that I am not using (e.g. uc_manufacturer and uc_attribute).
Export is not working yet, but I will give it a go, to get an idea of what is takes to upgrade it.
That said, I can now import vocabularies, catalogs, product classes and products from xml.
If any one is interested, I can upload a 'use-at-own-risk-and-please-please-test-carefully-before-use' version.
EDIT:
Fortunately exporting turned out to be much easier than import, so I have a working module for that now too.
Re: I am now able to import products in UC 2 / Drupal 6
I have been asked to share my module, so here it goes. Be careful though, as stated earlier, I know for a fact that some of the functionality will not work with drupal 6.x (e.g. still uses db_num_rows and such)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| use_at_own_risk.tar.gz | 13.62 KB |
Re: Re: I am now able to import products in UC 2 / Drupal 6
I need up bulk import digital goods into ubercart..but I am getting no replies in this forum. Please someone get back to me. I feel as if I am either being ignored or there truly is no activity on this forum.
Re: Re: Re: I am now able to import products in UC 2 / Drupal 6
As I understand it, you real problem is that your products are file downloads (right?) and so you need to associate the products you import with the actual downloadable files.
I can't say that I have tried that before, but I guess you should be able to add that kind of functionality to the importer. I would take a close look at what the 'File Downloads' module does, maybe even make calls to that module from the importer.
UC 2x
Hi all, this thread looks old and for Ubercart 1x so I'm curious if is there a module that fetch XML from URL and convert it (that one below looks like from cs-cart) to the UC 2x correct XML structure (and changing the encoding at the same time) so It could be imported to Ubercart 2x and create, update or delete products?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1251"?>
<Products>
−
<Product>
<Main_Category_id> </Main_Category_id>
<Main_Category_Name> </Main_Category_Name>
<Sub_Category_1_id> </Sub_Category_1_id>
<Sub_Category_1_Name> </Sub_Category_1_Name>
<Product_id> </Product_id>
<Product_Model> </Product_Model>
<Product_Name> </Product_Name>
+
<Product_Description> </Product_Description>
<Product_Price> </Product_Price>
<Product_Price_Special> </Product_Price_Special>
<Product_Currency> </Product_Currency>
<Product_Vat_Rate> </Product_Vat_Rate>
<Product_Image> </Product_Image>
<Product_Image_Url> </Product_Image_Url>
<Product_Quantity> </Product_Quantity>
<Product_Weight> </Product_Weight>
<Product_Status> </Product_Status>
<Product_Manufacturer> </Product_Manufacturer>
<Product_Last_Modified> </Product_Last_Modified>
<Product_Date_Available/>
</Product>If NO , please could you give me some directions how to do this in more automated way by myself.
Thanks
Re: XML Import
hi i am workiing on drupal 6. And i need a module which can browse and xml file and then store the datat in My Sql database.
Could any one help ?
Thanks
Dear Francois,
Do you have
Dear Francois,
Do you have any idea to export / import stock levels and sku s in UC ??
Regrads