ShopAdmin includes several new features, most of which have to do with the data import aspect.
- The error reporting aspect of the user interface for data import and update is improved. After validating the data in step 2 of the import/update wizard, ShopAdmin shows an error popup that used to show just the row and column containing the error. Instead, the error popup now shows the row and column as well as the actual error message.
- You can click on the error message to show the cell that caused the error.
- You can drag the error popup box around on the screen to move it away from data that you might want to inspect.
- You can download the list of errors into a separate CSV file so that you can correlate the errors with the records.
- When importing or updating data, ShopAdmin now checks for values for non-null fields. For example, the Product type field of the Product record is required to have a value (i.e., cannot be empty) in both Zen Cart and osCommerce. If you try to import or update data records with this field left empty, ShopAdmin rejects that record and displays an error.
- When importing or updating, ShopAdmin can use the value from a referred-to table as a lookup value. For example, the Product record has a field called Manufacturer, which refers to the Manufacturer table and specifies the manufacturer of that product. To date, when importing products, ShopAdmin used to require that you specify the record id of the manufacturer record – which is a numeric value generated by the MySQL database. Instead, ShopAdmin now allows you to use the name of the manufacturer in the Manufacturer column. It will look up the name against the database and use the corresponding id to store into the product table. It will also flag an invalid manufacturer name (i.e, one that is not found in the database) as an error.
- The table description CSV file –
the one you can download from Settings – Table Info (click the thumbnail on the right) now shows field info in columns. Each column corresponds to one field, with the name and type of the field available. If the field is a picklist, then the range of values for that picklist allowed by your specific cart installation will be shown in that column. This is intended to make it easier for you to use that CSV file as a starting point for data record imports, and to check the data you import against the picklist values in your cart database.