magentoerpconnect-community team mailing list archive

[sebastien beau akretion <sebastien.beau@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for replying lately.

First of all the notion of product variant in openerp and configurable
product in magento is the same for me

For the synchronization, I understand that it's not easy but sure using
product variant is the best solution. If you try to create a new module you
will finally recreating the module product_variant_multi and will have the
same problematics (like which fields of magento are in the template (tax,
visibility,...) and which field are a property of the variant)

So for the synchronization I propose this :
- product_variant_multi will generate the various variants base on the
dimension added
ex : you add the dimension size (S ,M, L) and the dimension color (red,
black, white) and openerp will create 9 simple products (S red, S black, S
white, M red ....)
- this simple product (flag as configurable product) will be synchronized
with the connector without big modification. We just have to check if the
product is a configurable product. If yes, we push all variant linked and
finaly create the configurable product in magento which link the simple
product in magento.

After I agree with you
- The standard fields will be copied from the template on the
variants but we'll still need to go configure the magento attributes
on variants so it will be perturbing with some fields updated on each
variants and some not.

This is the huge problem to solve.

In my option we have to improve the openerp and create a generic module
which allow you to move a field from the template to the product and vice
versa. So we can configure which field are commun for every variant
(visibility, tax, meta information, dimension...) and which are specific to
the variant (color, size...). And also maybe by default attributes have to
be added on the product.template

After we have to make some improvement in order to not enter twice the same
information.
Indeed in the case of the t-shirt you will have the color information in the
magento field and the openerp dimension field.
It's the same problem for the tax, each product have the openerp tax field
and also the magento tax field.

We have to find a solution to create easily custom mapping for the magento
attributes

This problem is not easy to solve...
A very quick idea will be use a wizard to create easily custom mapping and
also removing magento field.
For example with the tax
- the wizard will ask which object have to be mapped as magento
field/attribut (in our case the account.tax object have to be mapped with
the field x_magerp_tax)
- it will ask you to do the link manualy between which openerp tax and the
attribut option (openerp tax 19.6% => (magento tax 19.6% id 5),  openerp tax
5.5% => (magento tax 5.5% id 6)) the external id will be saved in the table
ir_model_data
- after mapping everything the wizard will generate the custom mapping for
the product. (someting like :  self.oeid_to_extid(cr, uid,
product.taxes[0].id , external_referential_id)
By the end the magento field is remove from the product object and attribute
and attributes option are check as mapped attributes

About product_variant_multi I made some improvement for anevia and I think
It's a powerful module, and on v5 the stock level is ok for them. I also add
some special option with the module product_variant_multi_adavanced which
allow you to generate automatically the name and the description of the
variant directly by parsing a generic description in the template (for
example : my  [_o.dim[0].name_] t-shirt which size is [[_o.dim[1].name_]
will be perfect for .... give my red t-shirt which size is S will be perfect
for)

My 2 cents





2011/2/11 Guewen Baconnier <guewen.baconnier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hello magentoerpconnect community,
>
> I avail the momentum of reflection on the product's packs launched by
> Raphaël to launch a discuss about the configurable products.
>
> By configurable products (I use the Magento term, do you call it
> varianted products in OpenERP ?), I mean for example the case of the
> t-shirt which has 2 colors and 2 sizes with 5 products :
> My T-Shirt (refers to the variants, I will call this one the
> "container" product)
> My T-Shirt Red L
> My T-Shirt Red XL
> My T-Shirt Blue L
> My T-Shirt Blue XL
> An example on Magento is available here :
>
> http://demo.magentocommerce.com/zolof-the-rock-and-roll-destroyer-lol-cat-t-shirt-126.html
> And it's configuration :
>
> http://demo-admin.magentocommerce.com/index.php/admin/catalog_product/edit/id/126/
>
> We searched for something already existing to manage them but did not
> found anything. Do you confirm ?
>
> We thought about several ways to manage them, here is a brief of our
> considerations.
>
> We excluded BoMs because that is not the same concept.
>
> We considerate to use the product_variant_multi module. In the idea it
> seems a good option. But in reality, the gap to integrate it with
> magentoerpconnect is big :
>  - Dimension and values corresponds to attributes and options, but the
> datamodel isn't the same.
>  - Generate variants based on a product.template but we will miss the
> product which refers the variants (My T-Shirt).
>  - The standard fields will be copied from the template on the
> variants but we'll still need to go configure the magento attributes
> on variants so it will be perturbing with some fields updated on each
> variants and some not.
>  - We are not sure of the bug-proof of the variants, it seems that
> there were bugs in V5 with stock levels, but maybe it is fixed in V6.
> Is anyone using this module and having problems ?
>  - And it seems to me that there were some other reasons
> I checked
> https://lists.launchpad.net/magentoerpconnect-community/msg00027.html
> and contacted this guy but had no success, we doesn't consider his
> solution.
>
> And finally we proposed to manage them simply with a product.template
> per variant as any normal product, but with a many2one link to the
> "container" product.
> The main disadvantage of this solution is that the user will have to
> do updates on each product variant and create each of them manually.
> But we can envisage a wizard to generate/update? them.
> The main advantages is that it is far simple to integrate with
> Magentoerpconnect and the products representation will be the same as
> magento (5 products for 4 variants).
> Indeed we can create views to display the "container products" or the
> variants of the products.
>
> We have a preference for the last solution, it is not perfect but simple.
>
> Remains the problem of the creation of the configurable products on
> Magento, because that's not possible in the API. We thougth that we
> juste create an attribute on Magento like "configurable_variants"
> which contains (on the "container" product) an array of SKU. Thereby a
> module on magento have to interpret this attribute and link them on
> the frontend.
>
> What are your thoughts on that ?
> Do you have any idea / hints on the way to go ?
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Guewen Baconnier
>
> Business Developer
> Business Solutions
> Camptocamp SA
> PSE A, CH-1015 Lausanne
>
> http://openerp.camptocamp.com/
>
> Phone: +41 21 619 10 39
> Office: +41 21 619 10 10
> Fax: +41 21 619 10 00
> Email: guewen.baconnier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
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