Mike,
This eCommerce research effort of yours is an incredibly valuable topic to me and many others that have online stores. We want some integration with our QB's to end the mindless, error-prone, time-consuming re-entry of data. I've spent many hours trying to find out what is really being offered by the stores you have investigated as well as other 'conversion tools' and I haven't made a move (from my Yahoo hosted store) out of fear that I'll only really discover the pitfalls of an ecommerce offering once I'm heavily invested in it. KEEP UP THIS TOPIC!!! THANKS.
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xml to usable stuff
If the XML file is text - which it should be from what I've seen - you can use PERL or code that works like PERL to search for key characters and sequences of characters. If you really need Excel as a final product, you should be able to build a resulting .CSV like file that Excel will import with no problem. If you want to do it in one step, macro running from a button calling code to open the file should be easy enough.
MS supposedly makes it "easy" to pull apart XML files in .NET. However, if you aren't trying to parse the entire file but find specific pieces, I thought their approach was overkill when they tried to teach it to me a few years ago. I could write a piece of code in QBASIC to pull out a few specific fields faster than I could write code "their way." Admittedly, their code may be easier to change than mine, but it will depend on how often you think the input file will change as to your approach. To a fairly novice coder, it might be easier to do it the MS way for a permanent solution; but I was pulling fields out of 255 character report rows wrapped at 80 characters 10 years ago, so maybe I've got an advantage.
Have you tried Excel?
I've used Excel to do similar transformations.
You should also be able to use XPath/XSLT but Excel is a lot easier.
Mike
The Windows cult
Well your questions indicate that you've been corrupted by the Microsoft Windows "philosophy".
cronjob
shell
perl
a couple of hours of work and one is done.
Biztalk
Microsoft Biztalk could handle the translation, but alas that would likely fall in to the overkill category.
Said the man who once killed a pesky bumble bee with a 20 gauge shot gun. True story. What? Oh, of course the missus was not home. Do I seem crazy?
Shopify
Mark,
I just read about your problems with finding a good e-commerce tool. I feel your pain. I set up a friend of mine with 1&1's solution and it has been a headache to manage ever since. Shopify (www.shopify.info) has caught my eye since then, but I haven't had a chance to try out their service.
I saw you were looking for a tool to convert XML to CSV. We use Jitterbit for a lot of our data conversions. It may be a bit overkill for your application, but is really easy to use, and best of all, free! This open source application consists of a server that does the transformations and a client for graphically making the transformation. Learn more about it at www.jitterbit.com.
Wow
Thanks for the recommendations – I like the look of JitterBit – wow!
Another possibility
Haven't tried it.
www.safe-install.com/programs/a7soft-xml2csv.html
Might be what you need.
Yep
That's one of my candidates for a solution.
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