RO CSVI

VirtueMart Custom fields import

12 June 2025 | RO CSVI

Requirements

CSVI 6.0+
Joomla 3.0+
VirtueMart 3.0 or higher
PHP 5.4

Background information

To import/export custom fields CSVI uses the Custom field import and Custom field export operations. These operations are available after choosing Import or Export -> VirtueMart under Options.

Virtuemart custom fields template

Required fields

The custom fields import requires the following fields:

plugin_name
custom_element
custom_title
custom_value
field_type

Optional but recommended fields

custom_field_desc

Virtuemart custom fields template fields

An example CSV file looks like this:

"plugin_name";"custom_element";"custom_title";"custom_value";"field_type"
"Customer text input";"textinput";"CSVI Import";"Type here";"E"

Let's have a closer look at the fields.

plugin_name

This field contains the name of the plugin that is used for the custom field. A list of supported plugins can be found in the Plug-in Manager: Plug-ins section. The Plug-in Name you see here is what needs to be put in the plugin_name field.

custom_element

This is a bit of an odd one. The custom_element you can find in the field called Default when you save the custom field when the Field Type is set to Plugins. When using another field type, this field is left empty.

custom_title

The name of the custom field.

custom_value

This is the same value as custom_element when importing a plugin field type. In any other case this is a text shown to the shopper.

field_type

This must be one of the following values, depending on the type of custom field you are importing:

S: String
I: Integer
P: Parent
B: Boolean
D: Date
T: Time
M: Image
V: Cart variant
E: Plugins

custom_field_desc

A description of the custom field.

Once you have created the CSV file with the necessary data it can be imported like any other import.

Replacements

01 November 2024 | RO CSVI

Requirements

CSVI Pro 6.0+
Joomla 3.4.3+
PHP 5.4

Background information

The replacement feature can be used to change data during export or before import.

Types of replacements

There are 2 types of replacements that can be done:

Regular text
Regular expressions

Regular text

A regular text replacement is a simple replacement where value x gets replaced with value y. For example replace NL with Netherlands. Any text found to match NL is being replaced with Netherlands.

Regular expressions

A regular expression replacement is a more advanced replacement using regular expressions. For example you can add extra text to the end of a field.

Creating replacement rules

From Components -> CSVI pro ->Templates tab -> Rules, Click New to add a new rule using replace plugin.

For example to create a rule to replacing text "NL" to "Netherlands" in virtuemart product description.

Give a descriptive name for the rule in name field
Select Action as Import
Select Plugin as CSVI Replace
Click on load plugin button

Find

Give here the text that CSVI needs to look for. When doing:

A regular text replacement the text here is just plain text for example NL.
A regular expression replacement the text here needs to be enclosed in forward slashes for example /NL/

It is possible to look for and replace multiple values in 1 replacement rule. Multiple values must be separated by a pipe symbol. When doing:

A regular text replacement the text is only separated by a pipe symbol for example NL|DE|US
A regular expression replacement each text is enclosed in forward slashes for example /NL/|/DE/|/US/

Replace

Give here the text CSVI needs to use for replacement for example Netherlands. Multiple values must be separated by a pipe symbol for example Netherlands|Germany|United States.

Multiple values

If your find and replace contains multiple values to look for, set this to Yes so all values will be searched for and replaced independently.

Method

Specify here if CSVI should do a regular text or a regular expression replacement

Examples

Add text at beginning of a value

This example adds the text Before to the value found

Find: /^/
Replace: Before
Method: Regular expression

Add text at the end of a value

This example adds the text After to the value found

Find: /$/
Replace: After
Method: Regular expression

Change text to lowercase

This changes the value to lowercase

Find: /(.*)/e
Replace: strtolower('\1')
Method: Regular expression

This will not work with PHP 7 and higher. CSVI 6.7.0 will have a new rule plugin that makes this possible.

Change text to uppercase

This changes the value to uppercase

Find: /(.*)/e
Replace: strtoupper('\1')
Method: Regular expression

This will not work with PHP 7 and higher. CSVI 7.0 will have a new rule plugin that makes this possible.

Change first letter to uppercase

This changes the first letter of the value to uppercase, if that letter is alphabetic

Find: /(.*)/e
Replace: ucfirst('\1')
Method: Regular expression

This will not work with PHP 7 and higher. CSVI 7.0 will have a new rule plugin that makes this possible.

Replace text

This replaces all occurences of a with aa in the value

Find: /(.*)/e
Replace: str_ireplace('a', 'aa', '\1')
Method: Regular expression

This will not work with PHP 7 and higher. CSVI 7.0 will have a new rule plugin that makes this possible.

Take part of the value

This takes the first 5 characters of the value

Find: /(.*)/e
Replace: substr('\1', 0, 5)
Method: Regular expression

This will not work with PHP 7 and higher. CSVI 7.0 will have a new rule plugin that makes this possible.

Custom tables import

01 September 2021 | RO CSVI

Background information

The custom tables import is a special import. This import allows you to import data into any available database table in your system. The table must have a primary key, otherwise it will not work.

Creating the template

First we will create an import/export template in which we can store all our preference. Let's say we are going to do an custom table import

Go to Components
Go to RO CSVI -> Templates

Now you are on the templates page, this is where the import and export templates are created. Click on New button on top corner and follow the Create a template tutorial to create your template.

Give a descriptive name for the template
Select Import as Action
Component as RO CSVI
Operation as Custom tables
Enable logging if set to Yes
This is a very important option. Setting this to Yes will tell RO CSVI to create a detailed log of all steps taken during export. This is a very useful report to find any potential problems. Whenever you post a question on the forum, make sure you post this file also. It is the only way to help you out. The How to collect debug information article explains this in further detail.

Setting the options

The next step is to tell CSVI for which custom table you want to import, from the options tab, select the table.

You can now set the field based on with which import should be done. It is now not restricted to primary key field but to any valid column name from the database table. On options tab, under the custom table, you can select the import based on field. If nothing is set then custom table primary key field will be used.

Now that the options are set, Don't forget to click on Save to save your changes in your template and make sure they don't get lost.

Adding the fields

Now that template is created we need to add fields to be imported. Fields depend on the custom table you have selected for importing. In this tutorial, content table is taken as example, so for importing into content table, fields are added like

Custom tables import with RO CSVI - template fields

Once the template and template fields are set, importing is done in a normal way as we do for other templates.

Validation

The custom import does not do any validation on the data being imported. You will have to make sure that the import data is correct.

Adding and updating

Data is managed based on the primary key field of the table. If the primary key field is included in the import file, the data is updated regardless if the primary key exists or not. If the primary key field is not included in the import file, the data is added.

Supported tables

RO CSVI supports all tables that are supported in the Joomla installation to be imported/exported.

Creating A Custom Import File

To create an import file for a custom import it is important to know what data is expected for the table you are going to import. To know which fields are available for your custom import, take these steps:

Go to Components -> RO CSVI ->Maintainence page -> Available Fields
Select Import
Select RO CSVI
Select Custom tables
Click on Go
Click on the column Table to sort the fields on Table
Now scroll to the table you want to import and you can see the fields that are available for import

Custom tables import with RO CSVI - available field list

Import a Custom Import File

To import your custom import file, take these steps:

Go to Components -> RO CSVI -> Import
Select Template we created for custom import
Click Select file
Choose the file to import and click on Preview from top corner. CSVI will display the lines from the csv file as a preview.

Custom tables import with RO CSVI - import preview

If the data importing is correct, click on Start import from top right corner and RO CSVI will import all data from the csv file. Once import is done status of the import and logs will be displayed as per preferences set in the template.

Support NULL values

Starting from RO CSVI 8.0.0 version, import of NULL values are supported in Custom table import for fields which support it in database. A NULL value can be used to empty a field, to set a field to NULL, the word NULL must be used as shown in the example below.

"name","title","introtext","note"
"sample article","Sample Article","Example sample article to explain usage of NULL values",NULL