In case you use not only ViArt Shop, you are likely to need some export/import services. This may be especially handy for the products.

Please go to Administration > Shopping Cart > Products & Categories and click the corresponding link at the bottom of the 'Product in Top category' block.

Note: The system will export/import all products existing in the database/CSV file regardless the category you are in.

Export

If you want to export the products you have at your ViArt Shop, click the 'Export Products' link. What you see is the full list of product fields available for export. Tick of the required ones or use the 'Select/Unselect All' check box. The system supports three file formats: delimited by comma, delimited by tab and delimited by semicolon.

Custom Fields

There may be situations when you may need some extra fields. They can contain some new information or the same data as the predefined fields but with different format.

If you click the 'Add Custom Field' link, you will see the following:

• Field Title specifies the name of the field.
• Field Value specifies the value of the field.

Note: You can enter some text (in such a case all products will have the same value for this field) or you can use special tags (in order to see the full list of available tags click the 'click here to see all available tags you can use in your custom field' link).

After adding a custom field it will be displayed with the predefined ones. You can edit its settings by clicking the 'Edit' link next to it.

Having specified all necessary settings click the 'Export' button. When prompted to open the file or save it, choose saving.

Import

If you already have a set of products and want to import it to your ViArt Shop, click the 'Import Products' link. Your screen should look like the following:

From version 3.1 the possibility to import large files has been also added. The procedure of importing is the following:

1. Upload a file with products to a web server using some FTP program.

2. Specify the full path to the CSV file containing the data and specify its format. Then click the Upload button. The system supports three file formats: delimited by comma, delimited by tab and delimited by semicolon.

Note: For large files please specify the path to the large file in the second field 'Or please specify path to your CSV file and press the ''Continue' button'.

3. Click either the 'Upload' button (for small files) or 'Continue' button (for large files). You will see two columns where you have to match the values in your CSV file with the database ones. If you have already imported some data, you can use the previous settings (tick off the 'You can match the columns with previous import by ticking this checkbox' check box).

Note: In case you have some extra fields (for example, a custom field), they will be displayed along with the predefined ones. However, you cannot import them unless you ignore some of the predefined fields.

4. If necessary, tick off the check box if the first row of your CSV file contains data and specify whether you want the system to show all the data before proceed or to import them immediately.

5. Click the 'Continue' button. The system will compare the existing set of products with the data in the CSV file and generate a resulting table where every product is assigned one of the following statuses:

• New means that this product doesn't exist in the system database and you can easily import it.
• Error means that some data doesn't match with the database columns and you have to correct it.
• Exists means that the same product already exists in the system database.

Tick off the check boxes of the products you want to import and click the 'Import' button. Note that you cannot import products with the 'Error' status.

6. Finally, check importing statistics. There must be something like this:

• 0 records added.
• 125 records updated.
• 0 records ignored.

Additional features:

>If you want to add some product and create a tree of categories you can use the following syntax in CSV file:

• item_id,item_name,category
• 123,Product1,Category Name>Sub Category 1>Sub Sub Category 1
• 345,Product2,Category Name>Sub Category 1>Sub Sub Category 2

This will add or update 2 products and assign them to categories 'Sub Sub Category 1' and 'Sub Sub Category 2' accordingly.

> If you want to assign a product to several categories you can use the following syntax:

• item_id,item_name,category
• 123,Product1,Category1;Subcategory2;Subsubcategory3

This will add or update Product1 and assign it to 3 categories subsequently - 'Category1', 'Subcategory2' and 'Subsubcategory3'.

Note: In order to look through the full list of all field types you might face while importing/exporting products and their descriptions see section 75.7.1