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Ebay auction manager for OSCOMMERCE


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Way to go Dave. I have tried this as testing for Dave and can say it is excellent. He has put a lot of time and effort into developing this so he deserves some kudos

 

 

 

 

 

***Start of gripe

But I must say I am about to gripe - everyone keeps posting asking for a mod for this and a mod for that. Yet wehn folks post asking for feedback - we get none or very little. Come-on people. If we put a mod out with any errors we get tons of e-mail or postings griping about the errors yet when we want help to test - where are all the complainers beforehand. You got to give to get so help out by being more proactive on the mod development.

***End of Gripe

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Just tried the Ebay Current Listings contrib. Have to say that it is ingenious. However, it does not work for me: www.busfish.com/ebay.php

 

Here are a couple of issues when implementing...

1. The languages folder is spelled wrong. It is spelled laguages.

2. The filenames.php definition is wrong. It is:

define('FILENAME_EBAY', 'ebay.php'); It should be define('FILENAME_AUCTION', 'ebay.php');

 

However, it is not pulling any auctions even though there are some being listed. Anyone having success with this? Any help would be appreciated.

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David,

Once I get the current listings contrib finished, I will try yours. Looks simple enough to install. Thank you for your efforts.

 

Oh, on the Ebay Current Listings, you must ensure that you are using themas, otherwise, replace the includes for header, left, right columns and footer lines and the stylesheet also needs replacing.

 

 

Regards.

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Hey - you are mixing two different things - one is to show auction you have listed in ebay - if you looked at the file you will see you have to enter your ebay info.

I have it just the way I uploaded it and it works fine. If you want the defines as something else, suit yourself.

 

Daves mod is to actually do the admin part - ie pull the item from the catalog, export to csv and to turbo lister to E-Bay.

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Benjiamin,

 

I just installed Dave's contribution. All fine, except that I do not see where the CSV is stored for using with Turbo lister :

 

I get a blank page after the export command :

 

http://www.18carati.com/catalog/admin/auct...p?action=export ( Don't think you'll be able to actually see that page 'cose is under password...)

 

Any ideas ? Am I missing something ?

 

Thanks

Franco

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Franco,

 

You don't get a pop-up window that asks you whether you want to open it or save it?

 

If you do, try saving it to disk. Should work, as long as you've actually selected auction listing rows via the radio buttons.

 

Now, I'll admit I can't seem to get my PC's to do an "open" properly, instead of a "save".

 

I usually save the file and then just double-click on it to launch Excel.

 

 

Thanks!

 

-= Dave =-

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Just to clarify, the mod gives you a streaming download of the Excel spreadsheet. It does not save it to disk on the back-end for you to download via a link... or anything like that.

 

Thanks!

 

-= Dave =-

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Hey - you are mixing two different things - one is to show auction you have listed in ebay - if you looked at the file you will see you have to enter your ebay info.

I have it just the way I uploaded it and it works fine. If you want the defines as something else, suit yourself.

 

Daves mod is to actually do the admin part - ie pull the item from the catalog, export to csv and to turbo lister  to E-Bay.

 

Blue,

I do know that they are two different mods. My point was that there were issues/problems with the Current Listings contrib, and I was giving people who authored/were using that one some feedback. Wasn't it you who said that there was a lot of effort/time being spent with little feedback?

 

Maybe they should be combined in some way when they are both debug'd. These are both genious solutions to the need for auction integration.

 

On my point before... you are able to see current auctions in your listings mod? I can't get it to work. Shows the page with no listings.

 

Regards.

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Dave, again

 

Shouldn't this bit of code in auction_listing.php

 

case 'export':

       if ($export_choice){

      if ($export_site == "ebay"){

	 $filename =  'ebay_export_'. date('m-d-Y_H_i_s') . '.csv';

	 header ("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel");

      	 header ("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");

 

Create a file called ebay_export[date].csv ?

 

if yes where can I retrive it from ?

Thanks again

Franco

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Dave, again

 

Shouldn't this bit of code in auction_listing.php  

 

case 'export':

       if ($export_choice){

      if ($export_site == "ebay"){

	 $filename =  'ebay_export_'. date('m-d-Y_H_i_s') . '.csv';

	 header ("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel");

      	 header ("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$filename");

 

Create a file called ebay_export[date].csv ?

 

if yes where can I retrive it from ?

Thanks again

Franco

 

Franco,

 

You don't retrieve it from anywhere. When you submit the form, the page it tries to load in your browser IS the .xls file. At that point, your browser should ask you whether you want to save it or open it. Are you not getting such a pop-up window when you submit the form?

 

-= Dave =-

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Blue,

I do know that they are two different mods.  My point was that there were issues/problems with the Current Listings contrib, and I was giving people who authored/were using that one some feedback.  Wasn't it you who sid that there was a lot of effort/time being spent with little feedback?

Maybe they should be combined in some way when they are both debug'd.  These are both genious solutions to the need for auction integration.

On my point before... you are able to see current auctions in your listings mod?  I can't get it to work.  Shows the page with no listings.

Regards.

 

 

In the ebay.php - I used a test userid so you have to remove it as I forgot to do so before uploading. You must set it to your userid or you get the test info and there are no items listed now

// Your Ebay Member Name

$ebayid = "YOUR USER ID HERE";

 

There is a separate post that deals with streaming the content from E_Bay which is why it was submitted as 2 different mods - that I why I thought you were confused.

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Hi Ben,

 

I was trying to import an auction in Turbo Lister :

 

In Admin I set:

City / state = Arezzo

Region = none / non US country

Country = Italy

 

Once the CSV is imported into TL it gives me an error of <tag> Region non selected and I had to edit it manually. In this field I only had the options to choose " non US state" or one of the US states >>> no support for international regions.

 

One other thing is that I selected layout ID = "none" and the CSV has the value "10000" for this field, but TL keep saying that is invalid and cannot proceed calculating fees.

See a copy of the CSV file at www.18carati.com/ebay_test.xls

Thanks for your help

 

Franco

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Hi Ben,

 

I was trying to import an auction in Turbo Lister :

 

In Admin I set:

City / state = Arezzo

Region = none / non US country

Country = Italy

 

Once the CSV is imported into TL it gives me an error of <tag> Region non selected and I had to edit it manually. In this field I only had the options to choose " non US state" or one of the US states >>> no support for international regions.

 

One other thing is that I selected layout ID = "none" and the CSV has the value "10000" for this field, but TL keep saying that is invalid and cannot  proceed calculating fees.

See a copy of the CSV file at www.18carati.com/ebay_test.xls

Thanks for your help

 

Franco

 

 

Franco,

 

I think I can answer that.... I think.

 

I've only given the Auction Create-and-Export Mod the ability to throw in codes for States when the country chosen is the United States. This was certainly most important to me. And putting in all those states and state codes by hand was very, very time-consuming.

 

Let me ask you this: Do you know for sure that if you were to go to Ebay and create an auction by hand that Arezzo is a state choice for Italy?? If it isn't, then you can't put that in Turbo Lister.

 

The "10000" for that field is exactly as Ebay has instructed / outlined in their documentation on Turbo Lister. It works for me just fine. Perhaps your copy of Turbo Lister needs to be updated ?

 

See http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/ and more specifically http://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/csvfaq.html and especially this very long thread from their forums: http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jsp?foru...=20030623124038 (Ebay's not very good at keeping their CSV FAQ up to date.)

 

I worked very hard to make sure that I included every field in the csv, even ones that I pretty much knew were not used. Bluephoenix assisted me with contacting Ebay on a couple of fields. And, as I recall, for one field, even Ebay didn't know what the heck it was for!

 

As for your sample .xls file, it looks as though the file isn't splitting the data based on where the commas are ??? This confuses me. The file you get looks like this all the time ????

 

 

Thanks!

 

-= Dave =-

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Coccect link to dovnload my ebay_test file is

www.18carati.com/ebay_test.csv

 

 

 

Ah, that's better.

 

Oh, and I made a mistake when talking about the State. I was thinking of the Region. That's something that Ebay translates into numeric values... not the City/State field. I'm not sure why Ebay would really care about the city-state field. I had thought that was something that could be any old text. But perhaps somebody who posts actual auctions more frequently than myself could remind us of that?

 

Thanks!

 

-= Dave =-

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Dave,

 

Thanks for replying ( of course my first post was for you... too much Chianti yesterday :oops: )

 

Generally speaking, when in the internet one is required to fill the field "State" that equals to " Province" for all non US users. And that's fine...

The problem is that Ebay has a coded only few italian provinces ( sometimes not individually, but in groups of 3 ) an Arezzo is not included, so I manually put "Firenze" wich is included, and it worked.

 

May be I could help you if it's a matter of typing few things in a file if you tell me how.

 

As regards of the layout issue, here, probably layouts vary from country to country . For example as the category numbers are.

Also mind that in the italian version of TL I don't see any preformatted layout for jewellery as in the US version...

 

May be I should install the US version of TL, do you think that would make any difference ?

 

Thanks

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May be I should install the US version of TL, do you think that would make any difference ?

 

Thanks

 

Well, that certainly would make my mod more likely to work with your TurboLister ;)

 

However, if you wanted me to put in code for Italian states, I could do this, but it'd be a BIT tricky, as I'd probably have to use some Javascript to get the page to reload when you selected your country of origin. And, certainly, if you were able to do some of the "legwork" by figuring out what Turbo Lister expects the various values of the states to be, that would be a HUGE help!

 

Ebay may want that data as actual text or they may represent those state values as numbers. That's something that apparently is specific to the Italian version of Turbo Lister (I wonder if it's really a different version or if it just behaves differently because you're choosing to post to Ebay Italy?)

 

Thanks!

 

-= Dave =-

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Dave,

 

I'm glad you can work on the "Italian Job" :lol:

I will definitively help you, writing down italian provinces. It's weird though that not every province is listed under Italian TL...

What I did is I installed US TL and I checked the option to download international modules ( while setting up the account ). The program downloaded the intl. package ( one for each choosen country ) and the italian one was exactly the one I had in previous Italian version, so I'm back to square one...

Since what we're talking about is setting the item's location properly why not pulling data from the OSc DB (e.g. store_name, city, country, etc..) and make those fields the default fields for every Ebay auction ?

I don't think you need to make a Java because there are a limited number of countries / provinces, so just an imput field would do, it's just a matter of typing data for the first time, isn't it ?.

The real question is that existing provinces don't match the actual Ebay provinces listing ( for Italy ) and even though I can write down the present ebay config for Italian provinces they could always change...

 

One other thing: I know that provinces are numbers ( it says on help pages that , for instance, Genova is 150005 ) but I don't know where to find out the relation between names and numbers; Ebay italian documentation says that they are numbers, but doesn't provide you any furher infos

 

Ah, even with the US database structure, TL doesn't recognize layoutID=10000 as a valid one so the program can't upload anything ( mind you, I tried to publish an auction on the italian side and didn't try on the US site ) : Are layout IDs different country to country ????

 

I will try later publishing the same auction on Ebay US.

Franco

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Franco,

 

For the goal we are discussing, I can't just make that Province field an empty field and hope the user's smart enough or lucky enough to write in the exact name of a province that Ebay will know what to do with.

 

Besides, Ebay is, in the case of Italy, it seems, expecting to see a code value in the .csv file for the Province, not text.

 

Yes, I know, Ebay's docs are nice and vague about what Province maps out to what code value.

 

Believe me, I had the same problem for the Country field. Ebay doesn't tell you much about that either.

 

So how did I research the codes?

 

The hard way.

 

I built a single Auction in Turbo Lister. Then, I'd change the Country.... export the auction to a .csv file.... and look at what value Turbo Lister put in that field. (For Country, it's two letters.) I'd then switch windows over to my php editor and write a line of code based on the results.

 

Then I'd change the country name in Turbo Lister for that auction and do the export again.

 

This is why I was saying if you're volunteering to research those code values for Country, you'd be doing a mountain of work for me! It took me a few hours to do all the countries.

 

And as for reloading the page, yes, I'd probably have to rig this up, because although Italy requires the Province field, the US does not. I'd either have to rig the script to load the Province choices based on which Ebay site you're choosing to make an auction listing for..... or.... I'd have to base it on whatever you'd choose from the Country field.

 

If I didn't load the Province choices based on something else you inputted on that page, well, then, we'd be likely to see auctions claiming the seller is from an Italian province in the US !! (Brooklyn ??)

 

;)

 

Thanks!

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Hi Dave,

 

I did what you said about finding out the region coding for country=IT

 

First of all there are the 3 fields about item's location ( example for region=Rome )

 

Location - City/State | Location - Region | Location - Country

Arezzo | 150009 | IT

 

The field Location - City /State can be filled with the value "None" and the program works regularly.

 

Anyway, there are only 12 possible choices for field Location - Region ( including "None" as follows:

 

Venezia=150011

Torino=150010

Roma=150009

Palermo=150008

nessuna(none)=0

Napoli e Salerno=150007

Milano Lodi e Pavia=150006

Genova=150005

Firenze=150004

Bologna e Modena=150003

Bergamo e Brescia=150002

Bari=150001

 

This classification is really weird because about 100 other provinces are missing, so I don't think this is a very important field for italian Ebay...

At this point I will definitively use the value=None just to be able to upload my ads, then give more infos about the item's location in the description field. If Ebay doesn't bother then why should I ?

 

I will upload into my server the example CSV file

roma.csv here: www.18carati.com/roma.csv so that you can have a look at it. It has been generated taking an auction to be published in the italian Ebay site and there might be some differences with CSV for the US site.

Actually many fields are filled with the *snake* symbol ( don't know what it's called....) and don't even know if that's normal

 

Bye for now

Franco

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Franco,

 

The only thing unusual I see about your .csv file is that all currency values are written with a comma instead of a decimal point. That looks strange to me.

 

As for those little "~" marks, yes, I noticed that Turbo Lister throws that into all empty fields as well. But in my mod, I ignored this and just left them totally blank. This does not seem to make any difference to Turbo Lister itself.

 

As far as your problem with the Layout id's causing problems, here's a solution you can quickly make to just your copy of the mod: Edit /admin/auction_listing.php. Locate line 1180, which should look like this:

 

<option value="10000" <?php if (($pInfo->layoutID)=="10000"){echo " selected ";} ?> >None</option>

 

Delete the 10000, leaving just the two quotes with no spaces between them. Do this for both locations in the line where you find the number 10000. Save the file.

 

From that point on, as long as you choose "None" for Layout, that field will be left blank in the .csv file.

 

As far as your Location - Region field goes, replace lines 804 - 864 (which look a lot like each of the lines below, but with US locations written in instead) in the code with the following:

 

<option value="150011" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150011") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Venezia</option>

<option value="150010" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150010") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Torino</option>

<option value="150009" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150009") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Roma</option>

<option value="150008" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150008") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Palermo</option>

<option value="0" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="0") {echo " selected ";} ?>>nessuna</option>

<option value="150007" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150007") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Napoli e Salerno</option>

<option value="150006" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150006") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Milano Lodi e Pavia</option>

<option value="150005" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150005") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Genova</option>

<option value="150004" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150004") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Firenze</option>

<option value="150003" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150003") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Bologna e Modena</option>

<option value="150002" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150002") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Bergamo e Brescia</option>

<option value="150001" <?php if (($pInfo->location_region)=="150001") {echo " selected ";} ?>>Bari</option>

 

That should give you customized Italian regions.

 

Thanks!

 

-= Dave =-

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Just read the entire thread, and boy is it long!!

 

I just did a search on hotscripts for "ebay" and a few interesting scripts came up, i havent had a good look, but there is a php one called ebay post sale script or similar, its $9 and it seems to collect all the info!!

 

There are others on there too which looked quite good, maybe looking at how one of these works might help to make the truly ideal ebay mod.

 

Ideally from our point of view, we want automated listings and the buyer to be automatically notified of there win, and sent to the correct url. Then the system to already have the winning price etc and the customer to pay. A nice automated system hmmmm

 

from a buyers point of view I bought from a seller today using auctionworks, and i really hated it. Normally after a sale i just click the pay now button goto paypal, pay and its all sorted. Not only is auctionworks interface cheap looking, i had to fill in all my personal details, then go through the paypal thing too. It was time consuming and id didnt like it! Ideally we want to automatically create the account and just have the customer at the confirmation page!! However i do realise this is a long way off at the moment. I will however keep learning php and add something as soon as i can :)

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For an automated version you will need API access to get the winning bidder info and such. As far as automated checkout, with paypal it is automated if you already have an account, if you do not you still have to input data. You can do some of the things you mention by installing the hidden products mod although you would still need to notify winners.

Getting the E-Bay module to be really automated will take many hours of work so it will be slow going as most folks tend to develop mods based ont heir needs at the time.

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