Commerce Server Blog

Ecommerce application needs product updates daily or frequently to show up to latest products information on their website. Sometimes the product information gets from company business users and sometimes the products information comes from vendors. For large scale ecommerce application, middleware servers like BizTalk are used for product import.

This current tool (attached to this article) is command based tool and be perfect for small companies with limited data upload and can be used only one time (during application migration) or regularly. This tools takes catalog data using excel file and through commerce server API, it inserts data into database.

The excel file template contains three sheets.

1.    First sheet name  is “CategoryData” – This sheet contains categories details.
2.    Second sheet name is “ProductData” – This sheet contains product details.
3.     Third Sheet name is “VariantData” – This sheet contains variant data.

Note: Kindly don’t change sheet names.

When the tool is executed, it will ask for data excel file path. Once correct path is provided, it will ask whether to import category data, product data or variant data. Based on the option selected, the tool starts porting data into commerce server.

The assumption is that the given catalog and product definition are created in commerce server.

How to add a category?

Category can be created under a Catalog only. So, before we create category, the application should get context of Catalog, then by using method CreateCategory(), category can be created.

BaseCatalog baseCatalog = (BaseCatalog)context.GetCatalog((string)row["CatalogName"]);
Category category = baseCatalog.CreateCategory((string)row["CategoryDefinition"], (string)row["CategoryName"]);
category.DisplayName = (string)row["DisplayName"];
category.Save();

How to add a Product?

Product can be created under catalog or category. So before we create product, the application should get catalog context. By using CreateProduct(), a product can be created. If the products need to be created under a category, then pass category information to CreateProduct() method.

BaseCatalog baseCatalog = (BaseCatalog)context.GetCatalog((string)row["CatalogName"]);
Product product = baseCatalog.CreateProduct((string)row["ProductDefinition"], (string)row["ProductID"], Convert.ToDecimal(row["ListPrice"]), (string)row["CategoryName"]);
product.DisplayName = (string)row["DisplayName"];
product["Image"] = row["Image"];
product["Description"] = row["Description"];
product.Save();

How to add a variant?

Products may or may not have a variant. For example, a shoe can have multiple variants like size, color, etc and some products don’t have variants like Books. To create a variant, the application should get product definition and to get product definition, the application needs to get catalog context. Once product definition obtained, we can add a new variant using AddVariant() method as shown below.

BaseCatalog baseCatalog = (BaseCatalog)context.GetCatalog((string)row["CatalogName"]);
ProductFamily productFamily = (ProductFamily)baseCatalog.GetProduct((string)row["ProductID"]);string variantID = (string)row["VariantID"];
// Add the variant to the product family.
productFamily.AddVariant(variantID);
// Set the properties for the variant product. 
productFamily.Variants[variantID]["VariantActualPrice"] = Convert.ToDecimal(row["VariantListPrice"]);
productFamily.Variants[variantID]["Color"] = (string)row["VariantColor"];
productFamily.Variants[variantID]["Size"] = (string)row["VariantSize"]
productFamily.Variants[variantID]["VariantDisplayName"] = (string)row["VariantDisplayName"];
productFamily.Save();

If you have any questions/suggestions on his approach, feel free to send your comments. Click here to download Catalog Importer.