Hi, I built our company web site using RW and Stacks, 2Surface Leather Limited but one of our major suppliers wants us to include their complete product portfolio on our site.
They make access to the product data and image database available to us via csv files and JSON can also be used to call the data which can then be used to populate pages for our site, any changes they make to the database are then reflected in our site when the pages load.
My problem is that I have no idea how to do it or if this can even be done using RW and Stacks, Googling the issue has led to suggestions that Rapidcart Pro or perhaps the Foundation Structure stack by Joe Workman might be able to do what I need, although at this stage there will be no purchasing of products through our site just presenting the products to readers.
Our supplier has told me that the system is intended to be used with a CMS so perhaps I need to move the site away from Rapidweaver?
Is anyone doing this already or can say if Rapidcart Pro or Joe’s Structure stack would be the right way to go?
Without knowing more about what they are providing you it would be hard to help. CSV is a simple text file using commas as a delimiter between fields (Comma Separated Values). JSON is JavaScript Object Notation more of a way to pass data back and forth.
With these generic terms, it 's hard to say.
Will the CSV file be on your site?
How do you want it displayed?
Do you have some samples from them or documentation?
The Foundation structure stack is for adding HTML5 structured data tags so I don’t think that is what you would be looking to use.
RapidiCart is a shopping cart, so I don’t know if that is what your looking for.
Thanks for responding and to answer your questions:
The CSV file will be on our web server, our suppliers system allows me to log-in to their product database and generate the CSV files then I copy it to our server where our site can access it. They are telling me that pages can then be built using the data in the CSV file to display their product portfolio but on our site using our navigation menu etc.
They also tell me that JSON calls can be used to filter out the CSV data to only those items I require to display on our site.
This is what they expect to see on our site. So the theory goes that rather than build all the product pages including images, sizes, colours, descriptions etc manually we can import or read the csv data and web pages are created automatically from it, they can then make changes to their database locally at any time and all the dealer sites are updated when pages are viewed.
You appear to have confirmed my doubts about the Structure stack but I know that Rapidcart Pro will read CSV files so maybe I should look at that further?
As much as I love Rapidweaver, I think it is easier to create that solution using a commerce orientated CMS. From Rapidweaver you can then link to this new site via iFrame or similar.