How to Change ‘Name’ Product Attribute to Storeview in Magento

The problem is that the second save uses the last setData called so basically you have the following situation.

1. on first call to save the data is:
   • name: English name,
2. on the second call to save the data is:
   • name: Polish name,
3. on the third call to save the data is:
   • name: Polish name,
   • description: English,
4. on the forth call to save the data is:
   • name: Polish name,
   • description: Polish,

You could either set the data at the same time:

$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product->setStoreId(1)->setData('name', 'English name')->setData('description', 'English')->save();
$product->setStoreId(2)->setData('name', 'Polish name')->setData('description', 'Polish')->save();

Or you could do this by using an array of data:

$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');
$product->setStoreId(1)->setData(array('name' => 'English name', 'description'=> 'English'))->save();
$product->setStoreId(2)->setData(array('name' => 'Polish name', 'description' => 'Polish'))->save();

Summary

Basically because there is no load/reset of the object in between the saves the data is always the same as the last save but with only the store id and what ever has been specifically changed by calling set data. The setStoreId does not load the store specific values is simply sets an id.

The solution I used in the end was pretty simple. I gathered necessary attribute changes via array_diff_assoc and used the result in Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_action')->updateAttributes()

EDIT:

The reason I opted out of direct DB query is quite simple, it's unsafe and I don't have much control over it. Using standard magento tools was also out of question since there were some customizations made to products that might result in incorrect data transfer. Checking all of the products to make sure it went well and no attributes are lost is out of the question.

So the solution I chose was shell script that would offer me some flexibility and control over entire process. What I did was really simple. I've gathered product collections for both stores in question. Compared them, logged the products that were not in one of the stores. I iterated through the rest of the products, getting the difference in attributes via array_diff_assoc and passing it to Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_action')->updateAttributes() along with product_id and store_id