How To: Import Images for Products¶

Ways to Upload Images¶

Before you can import the images, you need to upload them. You can do it via:

• any FTP client of your choice;
• the built-in File editor.

Ways to Specify Images in Imported Files¶

There are multiple ways to specify where CS-Cart or Multi-Vendor should look for images.

• Way 1. An image URL like http://www.example.com/test_image.jpg.

  The URL doesn’t have to lead to your store—you can upload images to an image hosting service and use those URLs. The images will be copied to your server automatically during import.

• Way 2. An absolute path from the root directory of your server to the image file. For example: /path/to/cs-cart/var/files/1/test_image.jpg.

• Way 3. A relative path to the image file from the Private files section. For example: import/test_image.jpg.

• Way 4. Only the name of the image file: test_image.jpg.

  In this case you’ll need to specify the path to image files in the CS-Cart administration panel: there is a special field called Images directory.

  Note

  The value of the Images directory is ignored for Ways 1 - 3.

  

  Hint

  You can also specify alternative text for images. Do it after the path or name of the image file, like test_image.jpg#{[de]:ALT TEXT;[en]:ALT TEXT;}.

Example of Importing Images¶

1. Prepare the images and upload them where necessary. For example, let’s upload them to the exim/backup/images folder of the Private files section, as described above.

2. Prepare the imported file. Specify the product data in there as described in this article. For example, here is how to specify multiple images for a product.

   Below you’ll find an example of the content of an imported file. You can copy this extract to an empty .txt file, change the file’s extension to .csv, and open it in a spreadsheet editor, for example LibreOffice Calc.

   Product code;Language;Product name;Images
   "T1";"en";"1st Test Product";"test_image_1.jpg///test_image_2.jpg"
   "T2";"en";"1nd Test Product";"test_image_3.jpg///test_image_4.jpg"
   

   Here’s what the content of the file means:

   • Product code—determines the product to which an image belongs. If you enter a non-existing product code in the imported file, a new product with the specified image will be created.

     Hint

     To update images of existing products, you need to know their product codes. Get the codes of existing products in a CSV file by exporting those products.

   • Language—a two-letter language code, for example, en. This is a required field for importing products.

   • Images—the names (and sometimes locations) of the product images.

3. Import the products. When matching the columns on the Fields mapping tab, make sure to match each of the columns in the imported file with a product property in CS-Cart. Most of the columns have the same names as the corresponding product properties; the images column must be matched with Advanced Import: Images.

   

   If necessary, you can also switch to the Settings tab and tick the Delete existing additional images checkbox in the additional settings. That way you’ll replace the the old images of the imported products with new ones, rather than adding the new images to existing ones.

   Note

   In this example, all images of a product are specified in one column and are separated from each other with the default /// image delimiter. The import preset settings allow you to enter a different delimiter. You can even specify each image in a separate column. In that case all columns with images must be matched with Advanced Import: Images.