Magento

I’ve imported 100,000 products with images (all “simple” products with one image each).
I send updated and new images to my media/import folder and my products get updated without a hitch.

Unfortunately, the dataflow import does not overwrite the image files. In other words, image “00123.jpg” (matching sku 00123) from my first batch import becomes “00123_1.jpg” when I update the database. Then “00123_2.jpg” for the next import, and so on and so on. As one might imagine, 100,000 images multiplied by every update to the system will be too much for the server.

I submitted a support ticket to Varien--they said that the dataflow connector works as I have described---in other words, I need to modify it to overwrite the images. If only I knew where to find the import files to make the change. I suspected that they would be in app/code/core/mage/model/import....but I can’t see anything that controls the image import.

Any thoughts?

Can you not delete the old files first?

The old images or the old products?  Deleting the old products would take forever and screw up any linking, etc, between them.  Deleting the old images would be much more manageable - though it’s still ridiculous that you would need to do that.

Yeah, I meant the old images. Does seem strange though, I noticed this myself.

Along these lines (sort of) it also seems strange that you can’t re-use images for different products. i.e. I have products that are different colours outside, but the same inside. I have a common image for the inside, but Magento doesn’t allow me to ‘choose’ from existing images, only upload a new one.

Ends up will silly amounts of duplicate data.

Also, does anyone know if you can delete the files in media/import after importing? I assume you can, but it doesn’t happen automatically?

By the way, “Improved import/export methods” is on the Road Map

I’ve actually noticed that importing seems to work better in the 1.1 alpha I’ve been playing with.  I haven’t noticed the above issue, so I’m not sure if it still exists or not.

How did you manage to import 100,000 products?

Have you noticed if you try to change an old product image with a new product image, it does not completely remove the old? It will still use it as the base? Thoughts? (Its not cache)

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/15130/

Have you looked there ?
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/18248/