Hi all - looking for some advice on synchronizing an external database with a weblog/channel in EE - hopefully someone out in the EE community has done something like this before. Here’s the scenario:
I’m building a site in EE 1.6.9 using the current release of CartThrob for the products section. The beauty of that, of course, is that really my question is still and EE question, since CartThrob just allows me to create a products weblog and then tacks its functionality on top of that.
So I have my products weblog fields established. This client has two physical stores through which he sells the same set of products (though the EE implementation is not expected to have every SKU at the start). His two retail stores use a web-enabled point of sale system that records sales so that both stores may draw from the same inventory. This web module will allow for a daily scheduled task (daily) of an export of a text/csv file that includes all the pertinent fields that I have matched up in EE - item number, short description, price, subcategory (categories are one product, to one subcategory), attribute 1, attribute 2, etc. and inventory remaining. It also similarly performs an export of the category structure. They can also set it to automatically FTP the files to a given destination.
My question is this - is what I need an API that can read this CSV file synchronize it with EE, updating changed entries, adding new entries and deleting (and or changing a status) of a removed entry? Is that a difficult or simple task? We just want to ensure that his website is an accurate reflection of what it actually sold and in-stock and we need to treat the website as a slave to the master inventory in his centralized point of sale system.
Thanks all!
John