J-BusinessDirectory - Import/Export broken and need other field delimiter

I have about 800 entries from an old directory, and wanted to import them to my upgraded site. I am running the latest version of J-Business Directory.

To make sure I got the format correct, I created a new listing and exported it to a csv. What I got was a listing that had nearly all the information in the wrong fields, according to the field headers.

Importing what I had made a huge mess, and every single listing had to be deleted.

I really want this to work, but am extremely frustrated and have spent a large amount of time trying to get the import/export to work.

I have the export file showing all the incorrect mappings.

Also, there are only two field delimiters allowed. Is there a way to add more field delimiters such as | so fields like description which contain punctuation are not broken?

Vicky Rowe

Hi,

Even if the headers are set correctly, if one column contain the same character that is used as delimiter the parsing is not done correctly. If you have some columns that contains the delimiter character you should quote the column values. E.g. "values; for , this column".

The standard delimiter for CSV format is only semi-column or comma.

I think you are not understanding what I said, perhaps I did not explain it clearly.

This is what happened:

1. I created a directory entry in the administration back end in Joomla, using only letters and numbers, no semi colons (what I chose for delimiter)

2. I ran 'export' to obtain a CSV file with the information.

3. The CSV file with the information was wrong and placed the information in wrong columns. I wll run it again, but that was the second time I ran an export of an entry.

There were no semi colons entered when creating the directory entry.. The information was placed into the incorrect columns by the export function.

Also I was asking how can I *ADD* a new delimiter to be used, how can I change the programming. I am aware that there are only the standard comma or semi colon. However, it is also common to use the | or tabs. I would like to add the ability for a new delimiter so that I can upload easier, as many of my entries use the comma in their descriptions. I am choosing semi-colon, but it is still giving me problems.

Thanks

Vicky Rowe

Here is what I got when I just went and re-exported the single entry:

Errors:

- the street number is appended to the description, though it was entered correctly in the admin entry. I just went and verified, and the street number is in the street number field, where it belongs.

- because of this, all the entries after this are left-shifted one field

Previously this entry had a description that included commas, and the entry was even more messed up.

If it exports like this, I am reluctant to import nearly 800 entries that also have descriptions with commas in them, even though I'm telling the import to use semi colons. I have checked the entire CSV for semi-colons and removed or replaced all of them. Yet it won't import without breaking.

Hi,

The issue was caused by a missplaced quote. The problem has been fixed in the version that have benn released today.

Please update and try again.

Sorry for the delay, I got pulled off to other projects and this one went on hold. I updated the software per your reply. I created 2 manual entries in my j-business directory, and then exported them. The following information was exported:

The information exports correctly until you get to address. Then it puts the street name in the street number field, and every field after that is then out of place. The import is working the same way.

I really want to use this software, especially since I paid for it, and now have many hours invested in attempting to import my large list of businesses from my old software. Can we get the import/export working so I can do this?

Thanks!

Vicky Rowe

Hi,

Please use the latest version. This issues should be fixed.

Here's what I did since google sheets breaks when importing the J-BD csv file. So I opened in a text editor first, and changed all the semicolons (;) to carets (^). Then I imported to sheets specifing the ^ as the custom delimiter. It worked perfectly. Then I downloaded the csv using semicolons from sheets and imported into J-BD and except for the pictures and the opening hours, everything came in fine.

Admins: note the ^ mike make a better delimiter (in English anyway). also, opening hours doesn't transfer via csv.