Magento – Getting product information from a external database

databaseimportexportmagento-1.9MySQL

I have been given an unfinished product from a client, and it is a mess.

This is my first time ever using Magento, but I have used other CMS's. So please bare with me as I am a "newbie". I do have experience with PHP, MYSQL, and a few others.

Let me give a few specifics, so I can give you a better idea on what I am trying to accomplish.

I am using Magento 1.9

My client owns a bookstore, and they get almost 100 new books each week (all different IBSN's). As it sits right now they are going through a lengthy process to export and import CSV files to get this information on Magento.

So leading into my question, can we import/stream this info from an external database? We have access to a database that has all of the products information (descriptions, author info, publication info, etc) and all we need to do is link the 2 together.

Is this possible? Or a similar way that could help the ease of this process?

Thank you in advanced for the help.

Best Answer

There are many third party extensions that can be modified to import products, you could have the file copied to your Magento var folder, then run a cron to import the products on a daily basis.

I would NOT try to import products directly to the database.

Related Solutions

Magento – Change bundle product price type via database

you can run this query:

UPDATE `catalog_product_entity_int`  
SET
    value = 1 
WHERE
    entity_id = 'PRODUCT ID GOES HERE' AND
    attribute_id = (
                SELECT 
                     attribute_id 
                FROM 
                     eav_attribute 
                WHERE 
                     attribute_code = 'price_type'
                )

Magento – Database File Not Importing Completely

Do you have shell access to the server? If so, you can likely upload the file to it (via FTP or rsync), and then use the MySQL CLI tools to import. Or, if you have remote access to the MySQL server enabled for your IP, you can import directly through your local CLI tool.

Here's an example of what I would do regularly:

MySQL CLI

mysql -u user -p your_magento_db -h server.com < database.sql

rsync/SSH/MySQL CLI

rsync -avPz ./database.sql user@server.com:/path/to/temp/location/
ssh user@server.com
[login]
mysql -u user -p your_magento_db < /path/to/temp/location/database.sql
[enter password]

The first example requires that you have remote access allowed to your MySQL server, and also the CLI tools installed locally on your machine.

The second example is used when you need to push the database up to the remote server, then you log into it and use the CLI tool there to make the import.

Note that the above command syntax might change depending on your environment, but this is generally the best way to avoid large transfer limits over HTTP.