Resolved Import J2Store products into multiple categories (CW MultiCats in use)

Hello Chris,
J2Store treats a product like Joomla article. It uses Joomla categories as Product categories. It is not possible to have multiple categories for J2Store Products. You can create a product manually from J2Store to see what happens. RO CSVI follows the same pattern as J2Store so cannot import multiple categories to a product.

Ahh that's a shame, we are using CW Mutlicategories which J2Store supports - with this we can manually add a product to multiple categories.

We have the need to add over 1000 products each to around 12-15 separate categories - I'm guessing that CSVI doesn't support CW Multicategories for the import? Doing this manually will take hours and we're trying to find a way to do this more quickly.

Many thanks for the initial reply.

Chris

Hello Chris,

I'm guessing that CSVI doesn't support CW Multicategories for the import?

Yes, RO CSVI does not support import of CW Multicategories extension.

Doing this manually will take hours and we're trying to find a way to do this more quickly.

I don't know how CW Multicategories saves J2Store Product categories in database. If you can share some screenshot on this i can see if RO CSVI can be used in any way to help you with import.

Hi,

This is a shot of a product/article where CW changes the Category drop-down into a box where you can select multiple categories.

I'm not sure how the database is changed, I'd have to try and work it out.

Kind regards,

Chris

Hello Chris,

Knowing how the database is structured will give us an idea of what is required to get the data in. Would it otherwise be possible to send us a copy of CW Multicategories to take a look?

Yes certainly - how is best to get it to you?

Chris

Hello Chris,
You can send the extension as an attachment in an email to support@rolandd.com.

Hi, email was sent, did you get it OK?

Kind regards,

Chris

Hello Chris,

Apologies for the silence, we have received the email and are reviewing it. We are looking to see if this can be imported with the existing functionality, needs new functionality or if it may not be supported.

We will get back to you on the final outcome by Monday the latest.

Hello Chris,
I had a look at the extension again, CW Multi categories stores the category and content ids into table #__content_multicats table. You can import these fields values into #__content_multicats table using RO CSVI Custom table import. To do this import you need to know the ids of the categories and also the ids of the Joomla content. You can get the ids using RO CSVI Joomla categories export and RO CSVI Joomla content exports. You can then create an import file for Custom table import putting category and content ids together. Let us know if this would help so we can give you more information.

Hi,

Many thanks for the reply - I think that may work.

So we would create the products in J2Store as usual, then I assume, we can export the 'articles' and edit this export file to put the ID's in as you mention, then re-import the 'articles' which will put the articles/products into the correct multiple categories?

Kind regards,

Chris

Hello Chris,

So we would create the products in J2Store as usual,

Correct create products in J2Store as usual.

we can export the 'articles' and edit this export file to put the ID's in as you mention then re-import the 'articles' which will put the articles/products into the correct multiple categories?

Yes you can export the articles and put in the IDs and using the below procedure import the file to get multiple categories for product.

1. Create Joomla Article export template.
2. Add id and any other needed fields to the export file.
3. Run the export.
4. Each product can have multiple categories. So you need to edit your export file according to the number of categories.
5. Create RO CSVI Custom table import template.
6. In import template settings on Options tab set the settings as in the attached screenshot.
7. Run the import.
8. Your import file should look like the sample content below where content_id is the Joomla article id and catid is the categories you like to add for the Joomla article. Multiple categories in multiple rows.

content_id,catid

5,200

5,600

5,300

That looks very promising, thank you for the help to work out how we can do this!

Chris

Hello Chris,
You can test this import on our demo site and see how it goes.

Hello Chris,
Please ignore my previous reply. The demo site does not have CW Multi categories extension installed so to test it.

Hi Tharuna,

We bought the CSVI extension and created the CSV file to match as you advised - it imports fine and populates the database fine, however the products are not showing the categories we have set them to - they are still just as they were before the import.

We can't see the difference between adding a product manually to multiple categories and what happens to the database with the import - they seem the same.

Is there perhaps something else we have missed?

Happy to provide any login details etc.

Kind regards,

Chris

Hello Chris,
What do you see in Categories field for J2Store product, i mean in the Joomla article page? Do you see any categories in there? Can you send me a screenshot of it?

Hello Chris,
Checking more into this, i found that categories are not only saved in #__content_multicats table but also in #__multicats_content_catid table. The item_id in this table is for content_id and catid is for categories. Multiple categories are saved as 9,10,11(ids separated by commas). To solve this
1. Create one more RO CSVI Custom table import template
2. In template settings on Options tab set the settings as in the attached screenshot.
3. Run the import with content as below

"item_id","catid"

"13","9,10,12"

Please run import for one product and see how it goes.

That's great, I looked for other tables but could not find one, well spotted, we'll give this one a go

Chris