OSC and Rare Booksellers

[kelagedart]

I am looking for general information on the use of OSCommerce, or any related products like ZenCart with configuration and installation instructions for setting up a web site for collectible books.

 

NOT new books or anything UPC or ISBN driven.

 

In my case, about 10,000 books in a database known as HOMEBASE, which can export into UIEE and CSV. Though I would prefer something that can parse its native TXT output.

(I would also plan to do other products, but would like to take this one step at a time).

 

In short, once I get the site itself modded, and up on a server, what would i use to feed it?

 

I would assume most servers would be using MYSQL, so it would appear at first glance the problem would lie in in TXT -> MYSQL conversion. Is this correct? And is there any available (preferably GPL/Open Source) solutions for this?

 

As an example of the TXT field:

 

BOOK|000186

TRAN|D

ANAM|Oliver Goldsmith; Samuel Johnson; Bernardin De. St. Pierre

TNAM|THE HISTORY OF RASSELAS PRINCE OF ABSSINIA; THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD; PAUL AND VIRGINIA

PBLS|Lovell, Corvell

DESC|This is an apparently very scarce Lovell, Corvell edition of this trio of classics originally published in the 1770's. They are all together in one blue cloth, gilt stamped volume. Undated but presumably before the 1895 pencil inscription on the ffep. Overall very good condition. Light wear to boards. Tanning to page edges. Please see or request pic or any other info.

PRIC|20

BIND|H

EDTN|F

UPDT|12/05/2007

UPTM|2:59:14 PM

BCAT|Sold

ABLE|1

UBID|25658

EDNT|Apparent First Thus

JCKC|None Issued

BNDC|Cloth

PBPL|NY

BOOC|Very Good

SIZE|12mo - 6╛" - 7╛" Tall

STAT|Sold

PPRC|2

PDSC|ne

LOCA|SB3cc

BOOE|

BOOS|

 

One in UIEE would be:

 

UR|001846

AA|Dr. Karl Wertheim (Translator)

TI|Rothenburg on the Tauber : A Guide to the Town

CN|Good/None Issued

AI|Photos and Drawings

MT|Sold

PU|E. Geissendorfer

PP|Germany

DP|1972

ED|Apparent First Editon

BD|Soft Cover

NT|12mo - 6╛" - 7╛" Tall "With illustrations and a plan of the town"

NT| this is a 48 page guide to pre-war Rothenburg illustrated with

NT| photos. Undated, but presumably circa 1933. In ENGLISH. Good. Two

NT| small coffee stains on front cover. Binding clean and tight.

PR|7.5

XA|4

XB|5

XC|BO

XD|S

[kelagedart]

bump

[kelagedart]

I have looked at Easy Populate but it seems a bit cumbersome for now. My data file would be about 10 meg.

 

I would also need to map each field to an OSC category, with the most important field being SKU.

 

Perhaps this is the wrong forum for queries about such a complex database. (I would also need to increase field lengths as my descriptions are sometimes 4K in length).

 

Are there any other Open Source projects with a database convertor compatible with OSC - with forums?

Especially something designed for the book trade.

 

Even a reasonably priced commercial product would do.

 

 

Any suggestions?

[dmnalven]

This is a very simple database and the default type of 'text' used by osC for the description field has a limit of 64k characters, so there is no issue here. 10MB is a minimal database. What you need is someone who knows how to manipulate text files automatically or spend some significant type hand formating your data.

 

There are likely thousands of programs to do what you wish to do. Any efective system administrator has a few around, including hand written scripts to manipulate files that are regularly needed, to convert from from one type of formated data to another. After all, this is just text grouped in a certain expected way.

 

Learn some scripting languages or see if you can import and manipulate in a GUI office suite, http://openoffice.org

[dmnalven]

(duplicate post due to system burp)

[kelagedart]

There are likely thousands of programs to do what you wish to do. Any efective system administrator has a few around,http://openoffice.org

 

Many, many thanks for your quick reply.

 

I am looking for at least one such program. I did a search for 'database converters' and came up with something that looked promising called AnySQL Maestro. But it doesnt seem to work on my Win2000 system.

 

Perhaps I am using the wrong keywords?

 

What scripting language would you recommend if I need to hand write my scripts. Perl?

 

I have Excel and Access here, as far as office suites. Is there anything at OpenOffice that would be more advantageous?

Am not too familiar with Excel, though I use it occasionally for Amazon. But I can do the basics.

Is it possible to use scripts with it to automatically format, delete and convert fields in Excel (or would Access be better for this purpose)? (My apologies if this seems to be a stupid question. Not requesting an actual script, just need to know if that is a feasible way to do it).

[dmnalven]

awk, sed, sh, perl, php...

 

The office suites have the ability to create functions to be used as you wish. This is something that I never got into, being very familiar and comfortable with the command line, and knowing from long experience its ease of use, effectiveness and (nearly) unlimited ability.

 

Excell is the spreadsheet component of MS's suite. Access is the database component. Calc is OOo's spreadsheet component. Base is its databsae component. I have had some luck importing files as CSV's to these programs (trying different combinations of separators and delimiters) and manipulating the data further, but nearly always fall back to simple scripts to manipulate larger files.

[kelagedart]

awk, sed, sh, perl, php...

 

This is something that I never got into, being very familiar and comfortable with the command line, and knowing from long experience its ease of use, effectiveness and (nearly) unlimited ability.

 

......but nearly always fall back to simple scripts to manipulate larger files.

 

I too prefer the command line.

 

Not being a database programmer, perhaps the problem is not as complex as it seems.

 

Are there any available scripts for a standard like UIEE around, so I can at least get an idea of the steps and processes needed.

I could the customize it to my needs. Such as automatically deleting any items with STAT|Sold .

 

Incidentally, I'd love to figure out how to use the basic text manipulation tools to do something like :

If (price>=20 and price<100) and category=mystery and saletime=true

price=oldprice

price=price*0.85

cocatenate(description)="This month is 85% off mysteries!"

else if saletime=false

price=oldprice

 

Within single database fields on what is essentially a spreadsheet text file!