Magento – Importing product images from URL problem

I ran into this issue before, take a look at this SCRIPT, simply create a one column csv, and run the script. Make sure to make full backup before, just in case.

With a small trick, I was able to use an absolute path to import the product images.

Magento way of retrieving the final folder is based on the current Magento installation location, therefore any root based path parameter won't go through. I was able to tric the Magento import system using /../. This allows to reach a parent or even sibling folder on any authorized level as the final path is still based on the current Magento installation folder.

For example, if your import file path is located as below:

/home/user/import/brand/img001.jpg

And your Magento installation location:

/home/user/magento

Then the Images File Directory import setting should be set as follow:

/../import/brand

And inside the CSV file under the base_image attribute column:

img001.jpg

Unfortunately this method still does not allow to include the path or a part of it in the CSV file which would have been better instead of having to input a new path on every import.

I think that Magento still has work to do in regards to their import system. At the time of writing, there is also an issue still present in the version 2.1.3 in which the verification function does not use the same Multiple value separator as the import function for the additional_images attribute. The result is that if any delimiter other than comma is used as Multiple value separator, the validation process will fail.