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