Data Import /Export

[epimadman]

Great cart!

Question on the IMPORTING of data (already thoroughly reviewed Abantecart docs on data import).

I have been doing this since the internet started and tested and worked on virtually every cart out there. (Abantecart is the best as we see it now, in speed and appearance...)

Imported using csv, txt, xml and api.   This tool has me a bit confused.  Am I understanding that we need to import products, then do another import of manufacturers, then a separate import of categories etc?  Having come from an heavily modified an customized easypopulate metric where we import a single spreadsheet, break it up into batches or manage server memory to avoid timeouts, this is giving me a bit of discomfort. 

I have exported a sample product as instructed, but its assigned a category id already.  How does one get category NAMES to import, we have hundreds of cats and subcats and 250 manufacturers?

There has to be an easier way to do importing for the experienced people (even SQL statements)?  But I am not seeing that anywhere in the forums and have gone through about 40 posts dating back to when you started.  I fear for the new ecommerce store owner trying to do an import...

Any help would be appreciated.

[abantecart]

Let me clarify.

Current import/export is built to closely reflect the data structure in the application and to maximize flexibility of the export/import.  Flexibility usually introduce issue with complexity.

You can experience time out with large requests as you deal with Web server requests and web servers control time out.  To solve this, you can use builtin task management tools and manage requests in smaller batches.

I agree (in general) import can be done simpler for most of the users, but we see it as a next step that can be a layer on top of existing import. Not sure when we get to do it unless it is sponsored by someone

We welcome developers to create simpler import/export extension that will be a wrapper or stand alone tool. 

To answer your question.
If you are experienced, you can use SQL inserts as with any other applications that you mention. You can explore table structure and build inserts. There is nothing different here as compare to other applications. Tables structures are straight forward.

In case of categories and SQL inserts, you do need to load categories first to get IDs from the tables. This will be true in most of applications. If this is handled by simplified import in PHP, than this step can be isolated in PHP processing. 

Hope this helps to clarify where we are now with import/export