Zen-Cart

Here is another update to the popular add-on for Zencart called Easy Populate. For those unfamiliar with Easy Populate, it’s a fantastic add-on for Zencart. Easy Populate allows user to create comma separated values (.csv) files to editing the list of products in their Zencart installation. A user recently emailed me requesting an additional feature of price break imports to be included in Easy Populate.
Price breaks are created in Zencart by navigation to your cart admin page. Then clicking on the menu I originally tried creating a very complex SQL query that didn’t quite reach it’s potential. I ended coding a solution that worked pretty well. The updated version of Easy Populate is availabe to download below. Instructions are included in the file about installation or upgrading from previous versions of Easy Populate.

This updated version of the script will export the model number, price, discount type, discount qty, discount price, discount qty, discount price, etc. Edit the discount type as follows:

The v_discount_type values are:
0: none,
1: Percentage,
2: Actual Price,
3: Amount off

If any item is set to discount type 0 then any previous price breaks entered will be deleted upon import of file. If you need more columns than what is exported by default, just simple copy the pattern of titles of the columns (ie discount_qty_0, discount_qty_1,…discount_qty_n and discount_price_0, discount_price_1,…discount_price_n).

Download Easy Populate v 1.2.5.8

I recently was switching a online store from using osCommerce to Zen-Cart, and realized how nice it is to have the Easy Populate add-on. For those not familiar with the Easy Populate add-on, this allows you to download the product data from your online store into a CSV file. You can open the file in Excel or OpenOffice Calc, edit the spreadsheet (ie. products, quantities, and other attributes), and the re-upload the file. Easy Populate will update your online inventory with the data in the spreadsheet. The one caveat with Easy Populate has been adding custom fields to the export/import data. This has been discussed in the Zen-Cart Forum, but I wanted a better solution than always having to edit the code.

I decided to tackle this project, because it always annoyed me everytime I need to setup Zen-Cart  for a client and have to add these custom fields. I finished editing the existing code to allow a comma separated list of custom fields to be entered in the Admin > Configuation > Easy Populate page. I submitted the code to the Zen-Cart, but after a month or so the updated has not yet been posted in the add-ons section.

The add-on has not undergone serious testing. Credit goes to phazei for converting this from osCommerce to Zen-Cart. I only code to the necessary locations for this to work. The only testing I have done, is used this on a few installs, and everything worked as expected.

Just as easy to post a link to download the file, than having to wait for the editors to review the file.

easy_populate_csv_1-2-5-6-csv