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Best setup for product input by 3rd parties?


mark754

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Posted

My site's just getting started and already has about 800 products from 50 different drop shippers who update their items frequently. We'll eventually have thousands of products and it's already become too much for me to deal with alone. I'm going to need to either have the suppliers update the site themselves, or hire a data entry person to help out.

 

What's the best way to structure things so that a third party can enter product data and images?

 

I could either set up the site so that each supplier has web access to their catalog section and nothing else. Or I could setup a MS Access table and have them populate and e-mail me the files for upload. Any other ideas? Is there a contribution for this? I searched and didn't find one.

 

All data would need to be reviewed and approved prior to upload and of course security would be a main concern.

 

Thanks in advance. I'm sure many folks here have had to deal with this.

Posted

MSAccess is not the way to go, rather keep it simple and have them populate xls (best comma separated format - CSV - ",") for upload with EasyPopulate.

If you keep track of previous file; you can then also easily do a diff with beyond compare, winmerge or so to see the changes.

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I do not use the responsive bootstrap version since i coded my responsive version earlier, but i have bought every 28d of code package to support burts effort and keep this forum alive (albeit more like on life support).

So if you are still here ? What are you waiting for ?!

 

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Posted

Indeed, a CSV or XML file would be the best.

Have them make it available in some (protected) directory on their site and use

a cronjob to pull it in, lock your tables, update / insert the products, unlock your tables on a daily basis.

 

Security wouldn't really be an issue as all parsing (and therefor build-in checks) would happen on your side - not on the suppliers side. Basically all you'd need to do is check a minimum price (so they don't set it to a dollar) and see if there is any funky code inthere that might hurt (very unlikely with CSV / XML and the checking functions in osCommerce)

 

Automation is your friend ;)

 

Regards,

Matthijs

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them"

Posted

Thanks.

 

I'm using a "loaded" version of OSC, which has the "Admin access with levels" contribution . Could this be used as a solution (i.e. setup a password for each drop shipper and allow them access only to their catalog section and update their stuff via the web interface)? However I don't see a place to define a password for a new "admin member". Furthermore, it would also need to be modded so that each "member" is only allowed access to his/her catalog "section", not the entire catalog file.

Posted
it would also need to be modded so that each "member" is only allowed access to his/her catalog "section", not the entire catalog file.
This is what the Virtual Mall contribution does.

 

Hth,

Matt

Always back up before making changes.

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