Order integration issues.

[Metolius Climbing]

We are trying to have our orders automatically integrate with our order entry software which is Great Plains. We first tried a simple tab delimited but we had the following issues.

In order to denote multiple Items being ordered, the Text file contains 12 instances of SKU/UnitPrice/Qty/Name all on a single row.
This will not work easily with integrating data into almost any database. Usually if a Customer ordered 5 items, there would be 5 lines with the customer with order header data repeating on each line; SKU/UnitPrice/Qty/Name would be different on each line.

So Now we are trying the XML format and ran into the following problem...

I installed the xml source file adapter in Integration Manager but am having an issue with the xml file format.
The file has special characters (<,>, ‘, “ )that are not offset by escape codes.
For instance:
The text version of the file has: <Name>Monster Sling 22&quot; Open</Name>
When looked at through and xml parser through it is: <Name>Monster Sling 22" Open</Name>

The double quotes present and issue. The can be offset by CDATA though:
<Name>![CDATA[Monster Sling 22" Open]]</Name> Would work.

Before we go off in any one direction it is worth contacting your shopping cart vendor to see if there is a way to accomplish this CDATA escape code functionality. If not we will come up with some option to get it done, their fixing it would be the easiest though.

Please advise.

Thanks,
Jason

[loren_d_c]

There is no way to have ShopSite add CDATA encapsulation to the XML file produced by the XML Order Download functionality.

And if the quotes are escaped with the escape sequence &quot; then it should not need to be encapsulated by CDATA to validate in XML. The &quot; is already the valid escape sequence for the doublequote character.

-Loren

[Metolius Climbing]

Here is where we are at now after some Microsoft feedback.

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From Microsoft support:
“I have been testing with your file and it looks like the double quotes are not what is causing your error message as we were able to get the file to work using CDATA, leaving the quotes in and using &quot within the file.

Instead there was a couple other changes I needed make to the file in order for it work.

You are receiving the error message from what I found because of the second line in your file.

(<!DOCTYPE ShopSiteOrders (View Source for full doctype...)>

This line needs to be removed from the file in order for it to work and not receive the error message.

Also, in order for the XML source to read this correctly in IM 9.0, you need to remove the Response section. Then the order information will display correctly within IM.”

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So they owned upto the “ not being an issue but there is some additional text causing issues.
I will edit a file and test their solution, then we need to figure out how the file can be edited before each processing. Could you do a quick search to see if there are any options on this from the web site perspective?

If not I think I can write a vb script that would run before each integration and delete the text. Not a huge deal and invisible to the user running the IM routine.
If we go this route could we download several files to verify the offending text is the same across all files?

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We maybe close to a solution, but I just wondered if you had any further advise.