Publishing products on OpenCart

The goal of this connector is to publish the products on bindCommerce within the stores created with OpenCart. The publication may be complete with all data and images, or it may be an update of only some restricted data, such as stock availability.

The execution of the connectors can be activated in interactive mode, by clicking on the appropriate button, or be "automatically launched" from a scheduled procedure.

Product publishing options

To create a specific configuration to be applied to the connector that will publish the products on OpenCart, go to the menu:

eCommerce >> OpenCart >> Product publishing

and select the Add button and fill in the fields as follows:

Configuration name: indicate the desired name
eCommerce platform: select eCommerce OpenCart

First you can choose whether the connector should perform:

Creation of products in the eShop (OpenCart shop)
Modification of existing products in the eShop

Consider that the SKU code is used as the primary identification key to decide whether a new product entry or update is required.

The category identification key used to manage updates is built by appending the names of the categories in the main language, which will form a field called "keycat", so if a category is renamed or moved in the categories tree it will be identified as a new category (it will not be updated, but a new category will be created in addition to the previous one, in fact it never deletes the categories on the eShop, which may have been created with other methods independent of bindCommerce).

For each of these actions, the following options are available.

Options for creating new products in the eShop

enter product name, description, notes, size and custom options
enter categories
insert child products
enter product - category matching
enter manufacturer
enter prices: keep in mind the options described below in relation to the price lists to be considered
enter stock availability
insert porduct image
insert category image
insert metadata and tags
enter featured products
unpublish products (if availability is updated)
use the heaviest weight between the real and volumetric one

Options for modifying existing products in the eShop

The upgrade options are listed below:

update product name, description, notes, attributes, sizes and custom options
update child products
delete product - category pairing
enter product - category matching
update maufacturer
update category name and description: it will not work with the name in the main language because if its name changes, the keycat, identification key of the category itself, will change and will therefore be interpreted as an addition
update prices: keep in mind the options described below in relation to the price lists to be considered
unpublishes the products reported as canceled on the integrator
update stock availability
update product image
update metadata and tags
updates featured products
unpublish products out of stock (if availability is updated)
use the heaviest weight between the real and volumetric one
unpublish categories left without published products (acts on the whole store)

Where to get the available quantity for the products

This is a premium option that allows you to define advanced rules to send warehouse quantities different from the real ones, for example by limiting the maximum, sending a fixed value, taking data from an attribute or calculating the stock as a percentage of that real.

For more details, see the specific guide on Quantities rules.

Attributes to consider

You can choose to include some attributes in the publication. The attributes selected here will be published on the online shop.

Note for products from Danea Easyfatt: This option is particularly useful to exclude from the publication the Color attribute that Danea creates whenever it is defined that a product is of type "Item with stock (Size / Color)" even if in fact it affects only one of the 2 parameters (eg size). In these cases, publishing both parameters on OpenCart would create a "false" product sheet, giving the user the possibility to choose size and color from 2 different drop-down menus, in which the color attribute would always be fixed at the default value ( -).

For a correct connector configuration, it is advisable to carefully consider the characteristics of the connectors involved in the specific configuration area.

In the same section it is also necessary to specify the target language on the site.

Attribute scale conversion

Scaling is a tool made available to create a correspondence between the specific values of an attribute saved in bindCommerce and any different reference values. The conversion can also be performed for the Manufacturer / Brand fields.

For more details, see the appropriate Attribute Value Normalization tutorial.

Price lists and prices

bindCommerce can manage multiple price lists and among the options of the connector that publishes the products on OpenCart there is the choice of which price lists to publish. In this regard, it is necessary to pay close attention to the key used by OpenCart to identify the price list (see in this regard the price lists management).

In this section it is necessary to choose which country code to use for the VAT rate.

Finally, let's consider the "Copy the price" field has as possible options:

Price excluding VAT on bindCommerce
Price including VAT on bindCommerce / (1 + VAT) to solve the problems of rounding to the cent

Questa opzione serve per gestire le problematiche di arrotondamento prezzo ai 2 decimali.

The problem derives from the fact that the price including VAT is not saved on the OpenCart price table, but the VAT excluded price (which on the database can reach up to 5 decimals), and then it is multiplied by 1.22 (1 + VAT) to obtain the price including VAT, and if we keep to 2 decimals, sometimes there is no price excluding VAT that makes a round figure.

Let's take the example of a product with a price of € 180.00 including VAT, the price excluding VAT is € 147.54 (147.54 x 1.22 = 179.9988 rounded to € 179.99). If it had been € 147.55 the calculated price including VAT would have become 180.011 which is rounded to € 180.01. When prices are fed by Danea, both VAT excluded and VAT included (rounded correctly) are present. If we choose the second option, bindCommerce will use the VAT inclusive price and obtain the VAT excluded price to 5 decimal places, which are sufficient to obtain a correct rounded calculation.

Choice of alternative descriptions to the main one

The option allows you to publish on OpenCart the values of products present in an alternative date, instead of the main ones. We will use this possibility to manage the publication in alternative languages or with a different format.

If there are no values for the selected alternative, the system will use those of the main tables.

For more details, consult the appropriate tutorial

OpenCart

This section is dedicated exclusively to OpenCart type shops. The required fields can be found in the OpenCart interface.

Store name: from the OpenCart control panel you can find the System -> Settings menu

Connector creation

Remember that before creating the connector it is necessary to install the OpenCart node on which the connector will operate. After doing this, go to the menu:

Process -> Connectors

and click on the Add button.

The following parameters must therefore be chosen:

Connector Name: Choose a name to identify what the connector does
Node type (technology): choose eCommerce OpenCart. After choosing the node type, the Node and Connector Type fields will be updated, presenting the choices compatible with that type of node
Node: choose the previously created node
Connector type: choose the type of connector eCommerce OpenCart [Product publishing]

Then click on SAVE AND CONTINUE.

Configuration

in this field it is necessary to enter the configuration for the product publication previously created

Product filter

In this section of the connector it is possible to choose whether and which filter to apply among those previously created. See the Product Filters tutorial for more details.

Differential approach

The differential approach is used to optimize the repeated execution of the connector under the same configuration conditions (options and filter applied). By checking the last successful execution of the process, it extracts only the articles that have undergone a real modification and not every time the entire archive.

Click on SAVE AND CLOSE. The connector can be executed in interactive mode (by clicking on the button Run the connector immediately?) Or through automatic procedures

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