Wholesaler inventory import plugin

-- HikaShop version -- : 2.6.3
-- Joomla version -- : 3.6.5
-- PHP version -- : 5.3.24

I work with a wholesaler that provides their inventory in csv files for download. Every morning at a set time they update their inventory file and every 10 minutes they update their inventory quantity file. Is it possible to create a plugin to use the cron to once a day import and overwrite the inventory file and for each item that does not have a quantity of 0 create products into specific categories based on the description of the item in the csv file? If so, I would also like the plugin to import and overwrite the inventory quantity file every 15 minutes and update the stock for the items imported in the inventory file.

Hey Jerome,
I've been looking at the mass action and creating a custom plugin documentation. I'm a little stuck as to how to proceed so I'm attaching an inventory file from my wholesaler so you can see more of what I need. The first thing I need to do is create a manufacturer category if it doesn't already exist and then assign that as the brand to the product. Based on different conditions of the csv file I need to assign the product to categories that are already created. For example:

• if the csv line's caliber is not empty and the gun type is empty and the mag capacity is empty the product will need to be assigned to the ammunition category when created
• if the csv line's caliber is not empty and the gun type is not empty and the mag capacity is not empty the product will need to be assigned to the firearms category when created
• if the csv line's caliber is not empty and the gun type is empty and the mag capacity is not empty the product will need to be assigned to the magazines category when created

Would it be possible to do this with mass actions? If so how do I go about that? If not I did come across this thread https://www.hikashop.com/forum/4-how-to/3958-how-to-add-the-products-through-api.html and thought it may be helpful with a custom plugin. Would I need to parse through the csv file with a loop and storing those lines into an array so they can be manipulated to be able to do something like in this thread?

Hey Nicolas,
Could you give me an example of how I could use a script to modify it on the fly using the conditions I mentioned above?

Hey Nicolas,
I completely understand that you can't take that much time. I've decided I'm going to attempt to rewrite the csv file based on conditions I need prior to importing. Can you tell me if the datafeed plugin will allow me to specify what category and manufacturer to assign to the product being imported? If so how can I do this?

For the "categories" column of the CSV file does it need to have a value of the appropriate category id or the appropriate category name? I'm assuming for the "product_manufacturer_id" column of the CSV file it has to be the appropriate manufacturer id? My CSV file currently has a "manufacturer" column where the manufacturer name is stored. Many of these manufacturers are not already created on my site. How can I assign a "product_manufacturer_id" to those that don't already exist?

Hi,
I appreciate your help with everything. I've written a plugin that downloads the necessary file, rewrites the csv file, and then imports everything. It's working really well but I would like to be able to add tags to the products on import. Can this be done similarly to the way categories and manufacturers are done? If so, what's the column name that I enter in the plugin?

Hey,
I appreciate all your help with this process in the past and I have everything working great now for a while. I've got one new thing I'm trying to figure out now. My inventory file has changed now and has price breaks for different quantities purchased of a product. I have 2 different price groups dependent on the user. How can I write my csv file to provide these price breaks dependent on quantity? Do I use the "|" character somewhere? I'm already using this to separate the prices for the different user groups like ",5.00|10.00,"