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By now, we have selected the niche and chosen a template, added some supporting files and created the database, and are now ready to populate the products table with actual products!
The first step, if you haven’t done so already, is to download the datafeed from the ShareASale website. While many merchants offer FTP access, and we could automate this a bit more, it’s easier when getting started to upload the data manually (yeah, uploading a zip of the datafeed is “manual” to me).
You’ll need to create a “temp” folder, chmod it to 777 so the script can write to it, and maybe change where your unzip program sits on your server (line 17)
The script to load the products table isn’t terribly long, but I’m not going to paste the whole thing in this blog post. So…
Then, upload the file to your website, go to yourdomain.com/admin-sas-datafeed.php and click on the “Choose File” button, then select the zip file from your computer, and click “Upload”.
What this does is unzips the .zip file, reads the .txt file and if there’s a new product, adds it to the database. If the product already exists, it gets updated. Finally, any product that wasn’t just added or updated, gets removed.
Repeat as necessary for each merchant that you’re working with.
This step isn’t very long, or difficult (considering I give you everything you need!) but it’s exciting as now you have a database full of products, ready to display on your website!
Next up… we’ll work on the display of the products.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Eric, when do you swap in your affiliate ID?
@Panda: about line 75
$rsItem[$rsMap['Link']] = str_replace(‘YOURUSERID’, $nSASID, $rsItem[$rsMap['Link']]);
Oh yeah, I forgot about the vars file.
/me slaps head.
James was wondering if it was only for SAS and I said yeah. Others want to know if it will work with WP, as well as I. Now that WP3.0 is out, I wonder if it were possible.
Oh well.
I am using WP, have split my datafeed into 500 line chunks, and use csv import plugin after I have massaged the datafeed a bit.
Hi, first of all, thanks for sharing your code. Unfortunately I was not able to make it work.I am getting the following error.
Warning: fopen(26485.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite.com/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 29 ($fp = fopen($cTxtFile, “r”); )
Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite.com/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 74 (while (($rsItem = fgetcsv($fp, 100000, “|”)) !== FALSE) { ) please advice.thanks.
Just guessing, but the script may not have permission to write the file after unzipping.
wow thanks for the fast feedback.
Eric, I noticed the temp file I created with 777 permissions has 4 files out of these files 3 start with the prefix core.(follow by a number) eg. core.13652 and so on their sizes ares 8.03MB each. the other file is an error_log (256MB) also this particular merchant has its datafeed as text file. one more thing in your code line 75 $rsItem[$rsMap['Link']] = str_replace(‘YOURUSERID’, $nSASID, $rsItem[$rsMap['Link']]); I have replace ‘YOURUSERID’ with my ShareASale user ID number.. as suggested by my merchant instructions: You will need to replace every occurrence of YOURUSERID in this file, with your actual ShareASale userID number, which is 111111. Your browser will probably ask you if you want to Open the file, or Save. Choose “Save”, and save the file to your computer…from there you can open it in any program you wish.
Fields are seperated by the “|” “Pipe” symbol, not by the comma. this may be a silly question but in your code str_replace(‘YOURUSERID’, $nSASID, are not the same ? store in vars.php, maybe I am missing something simple here, hope you can help me to understand and then figure it out. thanks again.
Hi Jon,
Line 75 handles that replacement for you, so leave it as-is. You set your ID in vars.php, which you get in Step 1b
Are you trying a very, very large datafeed?
Are you putting this all together step-by-step, or are you using the final zip of all of the files?
Hi Eric,I have contacted my hosting provider and they advised me to change
chdir(‘./temp/’);
with
chdir(‘./home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/temp/’);
this time the .txt (274Kb) file got put to the new “temp” file location
These are the new errors:
Warning: chdir() [function.chdir]: No such file or directory (errno 2) in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 16
chdir(‘./home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/temp/’);
Warning: unlink(26485.txt) [function.unlink]: No such file or directory in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 23
unlink($_FILES['sas']['name']);
Warning: fopen(26485.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 29
$fp = fopen($cTxtFile, “r”);
Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 74
while (($rsItem = fgetcsv($fp, 100000, “|”)) !== FALSE) {
I am doing this step by step ,my id is set in vars.php, datafeed size is only 274kb . thank you again. Jon
Remove the . before ./home
chdir(‘/home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/temp/’);
(Wordpress will probably make those “smart” quotes, so make sure you use a regular, single-quote
Hi Eric, I made the changes but did not work( I forgot to mention, I am not using Wordpress) I noticed something on the table products I have ;field #1 ProductID and the last one is field #42 bActiveproduct.
on your script:
$rsMap['ProductID'] = 0;
$rsMap['Option5'] = 40;
thanks for your help.
Eric,this is the transcript report from hostgator.com.
Hello Johnny,
Thank you for contacting support! We are happy to help! There is an error_log file in the temp directory, I would appear that it is expecting a resource and you supplied a boolean variable and that the execution time waiting for this was exceeded.
[root@gator1214 /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/temp]# tail -f error_log
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Warning: fgetcsv() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 78
[20-Dec-2011 10:48:53] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 93
I hope you can interpret this error_logs better than I do. thanks.
Sorry it’s not working for you. I can only debug so much without having access. Either try downloading the final solution, or contact me about doing the job for you
Hi Eric, I finally get it to “work”, We know the file got moved to the “temp” folder but we got errors: this is one of them.
Warning: fopen(26485.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/admin-sas-datafeed.php on line 29
$fp = fopen($cTxtFile, “r”); ( I just replaced this with
$fp = fopen(“/home/johnny01/public_html/mysite/temp/26485.txt”, “r”); and got echo : The products have been updated. Now I can see the table ‘products’ populated,Next,I am going to start step 3. thanks for all your help!