Product Database


The product database is comprised of a single Category/Department file and one or more Product files and which are located in folder7 under your FTP root in our server. The Category file contains all of your categories/departments, the Product file contains all of the products in a category or department. 

The sample Product Database used in our Demo Store consists of one Category File (c_file2.db) and two Product Files, p_florals.db and p_lamps.db. These are plain Text (ASCII) files, each line is a record and fields are separated by a <TAB> character. 

You can use your favorite Text/Word/Spreadsheet application to create or modify these files then upload them to our FTP server, for example: to add a new product in an existing category, download the product file for that category, use your text editor add a new product, save it then upload it to our FTP server. Your customers will see this new product right after the upload.


Here is the file names and record layout. Text in red are required fields. (ProductFile and ItemName should not contain any space)
  • folder7/c_file2.db - Category/Department file contains one or more category records. Do not change this file name! There are 4 fields in a category record. Each field is separated by a <TAB> character.
    • Record Layout: CategoryName and ProductFile are required fields. The other fields are optional, they can be blank but you still need to include the <TAB>, for example: category1<TAB><TAB><TAB>category.db.
      • CategoryName <TAB> Picture <TAB> URLHotLink <TAB> ProductFile 
    • Field Description
      • CategoryName (50 characters) - Name of Category or Department.
      • Picture (Gif/JPeg) (not used in this version) - a small thumbnail picture of this category specified in URL format.
      • URLHotLink (not used in current version)- a detail HTML page describes this category specified in URL format
      • ProductFile (30 characters) - This is the product file name. Product file is described in next section.
    • Click here to download the Category file (file2.db) used in our Demo Store
  • folder7/p_*.db - Product file contains all of the products in a category/department. Each product file must be prefixed with "p_". Each product record is a single line in this Text (ASCII) file and the fields are separated by a <TAB> character. There are 10 fields in each product record. Visualize the record layout.
    • Record Layout: The ItemName and UnitPrice are required fields. The other fields are optional, they can be blank but you still need to include the <TAB>, for example: item1<TAB> <TAB> <TAB> <TAB> 12.99<TAB> <TAB> <TAB> <TAB> 
      • ItemName <TAB> Picture <TAB> URLHotLink <TAB> Description <TAB> UnitPrice <TAB> TaxCode <TAB> Weight <TAB> HandlingCharge <TAB> Comment<TAB>DiscountCode
      • Visualize the record layout
    • Field Description
      • ItemName (30 characters) - Uniquely identifies a product.
      • Picture (Gif/JPeg) - a thumbnail of this product specified in URL format, this picture should be scaled to 75x75 pixel resolution for performance reason. This field is optional. 
      • URLHotLink - a detail HTML page describes this product specified in URL format, if specify, the iShopping Wizard will show this HTML page when the shopper clicks on the above picture button. This field is optional.
      • Description (Text field) - Full description of this product. If you want to show multiple lines of description, use '|' character to separate the line, for example: First line of description|Second line of description. All lines of the description will be displayed in the Product Panel, but only the first line is shown in the Shopping Bag Panel. This field is optional.
      • UnitPrice (number) - unit price of this product.
      • TaxCode (String) - tax code(s), multiple tax codes can be specified and separated by comma, for example:1,4,6,7. This field is optional.
      • Weight (number) - used to calculate handling charge. This field is optional.
      • Handling Charge (number) - Fix handling charge, not base on weight. This field is optional.
      • Comment (30 characters) - You can put anything here, such as New Item, Clearance, On Sale...This field is optional.
      • DiscountCode (String) - discount code(s) must be greater or equal to 11 (discount codes 1 to 10 are reserved to specify discounts for all products in your store). Multiple codes can be specified for this product by using comma, for example: 11,14
    • Click here to download the Floral Product file (p_florals.db) used in our Demo Store
    • Click here to download the Lamps Product file (p_lamps.db) used in our Demo Store

URL Format can be specified in one of the following formats:
  • Absolute URL, example = http://yourdomain.com/folder1/file.html
  • Relative to your home directory (where your home page can be found), example = /folder1/folder2/file.gif
  • Relative to the CodeBase, example = folder1/folder2/file.html

Download/Upload Your Product Database
  • To download the Product Database files you must know the username and password to access our FTP server. Please call us if you forget or don't know your FTP username/password:
    • Use your FTP client application and connect to our FTP server at objnet.com
    • Enter your username and password
    • Change directory to folder7
    • Download the Category file (c_file2.db) or Product files (p_*.db) from our server to your computer
    • Logout
  • To upload the Product Database files you must know the username and password to access our FTP server. Please call us if you forget or don't know your FTP username/password:
    • Use your FTP client application and connect to our FTP server at objnet.com
    • Enter your username and password
    • Change directory to folder7
    • Upload the Category file (c_file2.db) or Product files (p_*.db) from your computer to our server
    • Logout

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