The last few days have been very exciting, as we were able to finish, test and release the Import/Export Tools for XT:Commerce we have been developing over the last weeks for a customer.

The in-built import/export possibilities of XT:Commerce are rather simple and do not really work, as they dump some undocumented csv file, and that only for products. Even the apparently existing interface to the German accountancy software Faktura is not really working as there are several problems, e.g. regarding the import/export of graduated prices.

The goal was to implement a rather simple, but effective way of importing and exporting complex data, as well as generating some reports.

Import/Exports in detail:

• Graduated Prices, including manufacturer, packaging units, weight and display sort order
• Multilingual product information, such as product name, long and short description, search keywords, meta title, meta description and meta keywords. This procedure contains additional routines of filtering and converting html code and entities, as well as filling in e.g. search keywords to meta keywords, if the latter are not provided.
• Inventory, for stock taking purposes
• Product status, for quickly shutting of or activating certain articles

Another feature is that the system can set up “empty” products  by importing a list of model numbers and names. Further more the system can generate lists showing how many pictures there are per product or what media are attached to what product.

As a faulty import can shut down your shop, extra security measures are taken, such as an automatic backup before import, using Mysqldumper

The software is available as open source, but as it needs to be customised and set up (no routine yet), I am not sure how I will make this software available, for now you can contact us if your interested …

Tags: export, import, mysqldumper, open source, xt commerce

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