Export/Import Tool for OpenCart 1.4.7
========================================

The Import/Export Tool allows the admin user to do a bulk export
of all the categories, products, and product options to an Excel spreadsheet file.
The spreadsheet file can be edited offline and then be re-imported to the OpenCart database.


Requirements and Limitations
============================

1)	This module requires a pre-installed PHP-PEAR library in order to run correctly.
	This is normally the case with most web hosting providers. 

2)	Also, this module only supports one front end language.

3)	Memory requirements can be quite high.

	For example, for a store that has 13,500 products and 300 categories:

		XLS File Size: 9 to 10MB
		Memory Usage Export: up to 13MB
		Memory Usage Import: up to 355MB

	Which works fine with the following PHP settings:

		memory_limit 512M
		post_max_size 16M 
		upload_max_filesize 16M

	Not every shared web hosting account supports such a high process memory usage.
	Therefore, if you use a basic shared web hosting account, no more than than a few thousands
	products can be supported. Use a more dedicated web hosting account if a higher number of
	products are to be supported for the Export/Import module.

	The high memory usage of the Import is due to the fact that the underlying PHPExcelReader parses 
	the whole file into RAM memory first before being able to access the spreadsheet cells.


Installation
============


1)
You may want to do a backup copy of the following files because these will be overwritten:

	admin/controller/common/header.php
	admin/language/english/common/header.php
	admin/view/template/common/header.tpl

2) 
Copy the files from the 'upload' directory to your target installation directory
of OpenCart.



3) 
After installation, the following files are now newly added:

	admin/controller/tool/export.php
	admin/language/english/tool/export.php
	admin/model/tool/export.php
	admin/view/template/tool/export.tpl
	admin/OLE/OLE.php
	admin/OLE/PPS.php
	admin/OLE/PPS/File.php  
	admin/OLE/PPS/Root.php
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Reader.php
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer.php
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Reader/OLERead.php
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer/BIFFwriter.php  
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer/Format.php  
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer/Parser.php  
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer/Validator.php  
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer/Workbook.php  
	admin/Spreadsheet/Excel/Writer/Worksheet.php


And the following menu files are now overwritten:

	admin/controller/common/header.php
	admin/language/english/common/header.php
	admin/view/template/common/header.tpl

If your header files already contain changes from
other OpenCart addon modules, then you have to manually merge
your backup copies from step 1) with the changes done to them
from this module, using a text editor.



4) 
Before using this newly installed Export/Import feature for the first time, you must set the 
access rights for top administrator as follows:

In the admin interface, choose 

	System > Users > User Group

From there, select 'Top Administrator', then click on the 'Edit' link to the right. 
This will open up an edit window with multichoice dropdown lists for 'Access' and 'Modify' rights. 
In both of them, you'll see a new entry for 'tool/export' which you can select by clicking
on their check boxes.




Further help and customized versions
====================================

This tool has been successfully tested for a standard OpenCart 1.4.7.
Don't use other Opencart versions with this module.

If you need a customized version of the Export/Import Tool,
let us know and we can create one for a charge.

You can contact us at http://www.mhccorp.com/mail.shtml.

	Juergen Neuhoff - MHCCORP.COM
	http://www.mhccorp.com

