Details: Written by: Mister Ed; Category: Version 5.0.x - 6.02.x User Docs / Manual; Published: March 9, 2021; Hits: 1727

NOTE March 9, 2021: This covers the databases for versions prior to Route 66 version. Most of the information will apply to versions 5.0 to 6.02, Only the 5 userfield format applies to versions 3.0 to 4.0K4-b. The Route66 version has some slight modifications on how images are formatted.

For best results, use Pipe ( | ) or Tab Delimited Data for import functions. Export functions can be performed saving your product database in either comma, tab or pipe delimited files. Imports can be made in all three formats as well but we highly recommend tab delimited and pipe if it can be supplied.

Here is a snippet from the demo/sample database so you can see how each database line should look like ( each one is a single line of text ):

00001|Books|20.79|Learning Perl|<img src="/community/[[URLofImages]]/[[img_pid]]/learningperl_cat.jpg" alt="[[name]] - [[product]]">|In this smooth, carefully paced course, a leading Perl trainer teaches you to program in the language that threatens to make C, sed, awk, and the Unix shell obsolete for many tasks. This book is the "official" guide for both formal (classroom) and informal learning. It is fully accessible to the novice programmer.<br><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596520107?ie=UTF8&tag=agor07-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0596520107">Buy at Amazon.com</a><br><br>ISBN-10: 0596520107<br>ISBN-13: 978-0596520106|1.01|[[IMG]]00001/learningperl_sm.jpg|||Perl::Programming - Beginner||%%OPTION%%blank.html

This is the format of the database by field name:

5 userfields

10 userfields (Gold Version Only)

20 userfields (Gold Version - Separate Purchase Only)

Below is a key and notes to what each database field is.

p_id:
This should be numerical to aid in searches. it is also the equiv to a primary key in SQL databases. While it does support dashes and alphabetic characters, the preference is numbers only. Padding (aka leading zeros) is recommended to match the longest character count (if numbers) to increase the exact matching capabilities of product ID look-ups. No meta-characters should be used.

category:
This is the main product category for grouping and display purposes. No meta-characters should be used. Spaces and dashes are ok.

NOTE: if you desire to add a product to multiple categories, you will need to edit the product and save it with a new p_id ( simply change the p_id and the category and then save ).

price:
list price in decimal format. no currency symbols.

product-name:
The product name should be less than 70 characters at the time of this writing. No meta-characters nor quote marks ( double / single ) should be used here.

product-image:
This is the main image displayed in the product pages/catalog. The image is located in the html/images sub-directory of your store in yet another sub-directory named according tot he product ID of the product using the image ( note: images are automatically named, re-sized, and the p_id sub-directory is setup when using the online store manager interface to upload your images, otherwise they need be performed manually ). Automatically named and re-sized main product images will have "_cat" in the image name with a default size of 150 x 150 pixels, but can be changed settings wise. If no image is needed nor available, an image called blank.gif can be used.

Store managed images will have a URL and name like:

... the double brackets are token items that the cart will replace later for it's dynamic needs... and the above text is auto-generated when uploading an new main image.

If no image the, using the blank.gif image would look like:

<img src="/community/[[URLofImages]]/blank.gif" alt="no product image">.

URLs to outside locations may be used as well.

description:
The poduct description. Simple HTML code is supported such as line breaks, bolding, links to other pages, etc. Keep the description brief. If you need more text or technical specifications, you can link to a product page by appending &page=pagename.html to the link or if SEO friendly URLs are enabled in your storefront, append /page/pagename.html to the URL: yourwebsite.com/store/agora.cgi?page=pagename or yourwebsite.com/store/page/pagename.html - respectively. Also note that the page must be created and placed in the html/pages sub-directory of your store.

measured-qty:
This has a dual function depending upon your store settings. If you are using SBW (ship by weight), it is the weight used to calculate shipment ratings/costs. Otherwise, it will be the cost of shipping if SBW is not enabled in your store's shipping settings.

user1:
This field is reserved for small thumbnail images that are displayed in the cart contents displays, usually seen after adding to tthe cart (if enabled), display cart, and checkout screens.

The format for the small images is: [[IMG]]productid/imagename_sm.jpg

... the double brackets are token items that the cart will replace later for it's dynamic needs.. and this text is auto-generated when uploading an new main image also adding "_sm" to the image name ( re-sized to 60 x 60 pixels by default, but can be changed settings wise ) .

Leave blank if no thumbnail is available locally to the store or thumbnails are disabled.

user2 ... user5:
These are user configurable fields. the standard version goes up to user5. Gold versions have the ability to increase the number of userfields to either 10 or 20 with module upgrades. These userfields can be used for sub-categories, inventory counts, net profit, tax free indicators, downloadable file names for the product, additional search parameters, keywords, tags, and much much more. Many of the managers allow you to set which userfield will be used by the cart for inventory, downloadables, tax exempt status, etc. Because of this, any additional information you need to add to your products from database imports, need to be customized to fit into these fields according to your manager settings.

NOTE on sub-categories: If enabled in manager settings, subcats are entered in the userfield of choice. Multiple sub-categories within the main category can be added if separated by double colon characters ( :: ) . For example, if you you had a product in the Books category that you wanted to add to two sub-categories called Perl and Programming, you would enter: Perl::Programming in the appropriate userfield of choice for the product.

user6 … user10 (Gold Versions Only):

same as user2-user5, just an expansion of userfields to 10 total.

user11 … user20 (Separate add-on for Gold Versions Only – Purchased Separately)

same as user2-user5, just an expansion of userfield to 20 total

fields not listed above – after 10 and 20 userfields only:

these fields follow immediately after the userfields in the 10 and 20 userfield editions (and before the options field):

SpecialsPrice|NetProfits|WholesalePrice|Inventory

SpecialsPrice – not officially used currently, but can be used with customization to cart layouts/templates and payment processing.

NetProfits – can be used to indicate ne profits from each unit sold of the product.

WholesalePrice - not officially used currently, but can be used with customization to cart layouts/templates and payment processing.

Inventory – can be selected to use for inventory count available, instead of a userfield.

option-file:

This is the tokenized location of the option file that the product will use. The file is created independently from the product database and so this just merely links to the file of choice. Option files can be very simple to very complex, so it's a topic covered elsewhere. No matter how many userfields are present, this will always be the last field on the database line.

The format of the option-file field is:

%%OPTION%%optionfilename.html

If no option file is used, then the default should be:

%%OPTION%%blank.html

Text within the double % characters is a token. While most tokens use enclosing double brackets, some of the options oriented tokens use double % characters at each end.

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Misc

Product Database - Standard

Here is a snippet from the demo/sample database so you can see how each database line should look like ( each one is a single line of text ):

This is the format of the database by field name:

Below is a key and notes to what each database field is.