Database Upload

Database Upload

One of the most powerful ShopSite features is database upload, which lets the seller load a database from virtually any spreadsheet or database program up to their ShopSite back office in a delimited text format. A delimiter is a unique character that is used to separate the fields in the database. The ShopSite default is tab-delimited, but you can change the delimiter to another character if it better suits your database.

Databases of both products and page layout information can be uploaded. In fact, with two carefully constructed databases, a ShopSite user can build a complete store with two quick uploads, without having to enter a single product manually in the ShopSite interface.

While in either the Products or the Pages section (depending on whether you want to upload your products database or page format database), click on the Database Upload button and a page will come up asking for either the path to the database on your server or the file name of the database on a local disk. You must be using Netscape Navigator or a newer version of Internet Explorer to take advantage of the second feature, which allows you to upload the database directly from your PC's hard drive through your browser, rather than have to ftp it to the server first. Find your delimited file on the drive, and click the button.

Note: The file must be located in or off of your output directory.

Below the File Name box are the settings for the delimiters that your are using. The default delimiter between fields (for example, between each product's Name, Price, Description, etc.) is 'Tabulation," or tabs. The default delimiter within a field is the pipe symbol (|). Delimiters are used within fields for fields such as "In These Pages," where more than one item is entered.

A new screen will come up with a listing of all the items of your first record, along with a pull-down menu. You can select the ShopSite field in the pull-down menu that corresponds with each field in your database.

From here you have the choice of creating completely new records for your store or updating existing records in your store. Selecting "Create New Records" will add all the records you uploaded into your store's database.

Selecting "Update Existing Records" brings up a new page with two questions. The first asks you to select which field you would like as a reference field. This is the field the database upload will use to match existing records with your uploaded ones. It will usually be the name of the page or product or some type of constant ID. The second question asks what you wish to do with unmatched records. If you select "Ignore" then any unmatched record will be ignored. If you select "Add," an unmatched record will be added to your database as a new record.

When building your database, you can use a template so that you do not have to choose a corresponding field from the pull-down menu for each item. If you use the header fields displayed below, it will choose them automatically. Note: The database upload function will enter in a product or a page called "name" that contains the header info. You can delete this from your list of pages or products when your upload is finished. These templates also contain a guideline for handling the default settings. If you have "<empty>" in a field, it will leave the setting at the default. Here's an example of a tab-delimited product file (scroll right to see the whole thing):
Name	Price	Taxable	SKU	Graphic	Product Description	Option Text	Option Finite Text	Options Box?	In These Pages	Display more information page?	More information text	More information graphic	File name	Template	Display Name?	Display SKU?	Display Price?	Display Graphic?	Name Style	Name Size	Price Style	Price Size	SKU Style	SKU Size	Description Style	Description Size	Image Alignment	Text Wrap	Weight	Second Day Shipping	Next Day Shipping	Subproducts
Pizza play set	17.95	checked	<empty>	pizza.gif	Seven items to create fancy pizzas.On Sale Now!	Please choose your type of pizza and, in the field below, specify two of the following accessories for your play set: Cutter, knife, cheese shaker, pepper shaker.	PepperoniSupremeDeep DishTraditional	checked	<empty>	<empty>	<empty>	none	<empty>	0	checked	<empty>	checked	checked	Bold	Normal	Bold	Normal	Plain	Small	Plain	Normal	Left	On	0.000	0.000	0.000	<empty>
And here's a similar template for a page:
Name	Display Name?	Graphic	Display graphic?	Text 1	Text 2	Text 3	Link Name	Link Graphic	Link Text	Text Wrap	Link Location	Template	Lay out	Columns	Display column borders?	Page Width	Display Universal Header?	Display Universal Footer?	Text Color	Background Color	Link Color	Visited Link Color	Active Link Color	Background Image	File name	Link Pages	Link Products
Tina's Toys	<empty>	banner.home.gif	checked	<center>Welcome to Tina's Toys, your alternative toy store on the Internet.</center>Have you noticed that they hardly come out with any toys these days that don't have a TV show, or a breakfast cereal to go with them? Have you noticed that they seem to fall apart after a week? We offer simple, rugged toys that your kids will love for years and won't go out of style soon.	<empty>	<center>E-mail <a href="mailto:tina@toys.com">tina@toys.com</a> or call 1-888-tina-toy with questions.<hr width=90%><a href="http://www.shopsite.com"><img src="media/powered.gif" ALT="ShopSite" width=100 height=50 border=0></a> </center>	<empty>	none	<empty>	Off	<empty>	1	Centered	Four columns	<empty>	90% wide	<empty>	<empty>	Black (#000000)	White (#FFFFFF)	Taupe (#666633)	Olive (#666600)	Green (#00FF00)	none	index.html	<empty>	<empty>
See the Database Upload Fields document for details about the information that can go in the different database upload fields.

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