LemonStand Documentation

Importing products and customers from CSV files

LemonStand has built-in features for importing products and customers from CSV files. You can find corresponding buttons on the Products and Customers pages. 

The Product and Customer import pages have similar user interface with some data-specific options. For example, the Product Import page allows you to upload a ZIP archive containing product images. The CSV Import user interface is intuitive, and the form controls are well described, but there are some hints, that could be useful when you prepare and import a CSV file.

• If you enable the "I want LemonStand to update products with existing SKU" checkbox, LemonStand will update all products in your database, which have a matching SKU in the CSV file. All product parameters will be overridden by information from the CSV file and options specified on the CSV Import page. 
• As grouped products in LemonStand have different SKU values, the CSV import process do not interfere with grouped products. It will not remove any grouped products from updated products, and it will not add any grouped products to existing products. But it will update all products, including grouped products, if you checked the "I want LemonStand to update products with existing SKU" checkbox and if there are products with existing SKU values in the CSV file.
• For on/off columns, like the product Enabled, Track Inventory and Hide if Out Of Stock columns the following values in a CSV file column will be considered as ON: 1, enabled, y, yes, active. All other values will be considered as OFF. 
• Multiple product categories must be separated with the pipe (|) symbol. 
• Multiple images must be separated with the comma symbol.
• Data in the product options column should have the following format:

  Color: Red|Green|Blue
  Size: Small|Large|Giant

• Data in the per-product Shipping Cost column could be specified as a single numeric value or in tabular format. A single numeric value will interpreted as "use this shipping cost for all customer locations". Tabular data format allows to specify different shipping cost values for different locations. Tabular data should be multi-line (one line per one location) and cells should be separated with the pipe (|) symbol. Cells should be specified in the following sequence: country code, state code, ZIP, cost. Use the wildcard (*) character in the country, state and ZIP columns to indicate the "any value" condition. The following example defines 3 values for the shipping cost - for Canada, for Washington, USA and for all other locations:

  CA|*|*|10
  US|WA|*|20
  *|*|*|30

• You can bind global extra option sets to products. First you need to create global extra option sets in the Administration Area (Shop/Products/Manage extra option sets) and assign them API codes. After that you can list extra option set API codes in the CSV file, separating them the pipe (|) symbol.

Product import tutorial

For the demonstration proposes we created a simple CSV file, containing a single product. Please download the following files:

• import_example.csv - contains the example product (use the right-click/Save File As menu to download the file).
• images.zip - contains an image for the example product
• example_products.icf - column configuration file (use the right-click/Save File As menu to download the file).

The CSV file contains two rows of data. The first row contains column names, and the second row contains column data. The images.zip archive contains a directory images with a single JPG file inside. The Images column in the CSV file refers to this file. In order to import the CSV file you will need to follow the simple instructions:

1. Open the Shop/Products page and click the Import CSV button.
2. Click the Upload a file link and select the import_example.csv file.
3. Click the Load column configuration link and select the example_products.icf file. 
4. Select a product type in the drop-down menu below the column lists.
5. Click the "I have a ZIP archive containing product images and I want LemonStand to import them" checkbox and then click the Upload a file link. Select the images.zip file.
6. As the images in the ZIP file are inside the "images" directory, you also need to specify the images value in the Path to the images directory in the ZIP file field. This will allow LemonStand to find images the CSV file refers to.
7. Click the Import products button.

After that you can return to the product list and find the imported product named "Example product". You may need to use the list search field, if you have many products in your store. Make sure that the imported product has an image assigned and that it belongs to the CSV and Examples categories, which were created during the import.

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