Download Orders File Format

Each line in the downloaded file is an order (except for the first line). The first line indicates the name of each field and the order that it is found in the remaining records. For example the first four fields of the first record (line) would contain:

Date OrderNum Name Company

The next two records might have the following in the first four fields:

Thu Nov 20 14:55:11 1997 1235 Joe Cool Open Market, Inc.Thu Nov 20 16:35:31 1997 1236 Sally Smith <empty>

Each field is separated by a tab. The first field is the date and time the order was placed, the second is the order number, the third is the customer name, and the fourth field is the company name. Note that in the second order Sally did not enter a company name so the word " <empty>" is listed.

You can determine what most of the field names mean by their name such as "Price," "GrandTotal," and "SKU." However, a couple of fields need further explanation.

"PayType" contains a number that indicates the payment method as follows:

0 - Visa
1 - MasterCard
2 - Discover
3 - American Express
4 - Purchase Order
5 - C.O.D.
6 - Check
7 - (unused)
8 - Generic 1
9 - Generic 2

"NumItems" indicates how many separate products were ordered (not to be confused with "Quantity," which indicates the amount of a product that was ordered.) For example, if Sally orders 5 copies of the book Selling on the Web using ShopSite then NumItems would be 1 and Quantity would be 5. But if Joe orders 1 copy of Selling on the Web using ShopSite and 1 copy of ShopSite for Dummies then NumItems would be 2 and Quantity would be 1 each time it is displayed in the order record. Note that all fields related to a product would be repeated in the order record for Joe, because Joe ordered two separate products. It is therefore important for a program to read the NumItems field so that the number of remaining fields can be correctly calculated for that order record.

Note:

If you are using Internet Explorer, when you select Download, the default file name is orderhandler.exe or orderhandler.cgi, depending on your client OS. This file is not an executable, it is a tab-delimited text file, and you should rename it to have an appropriate extension. Netscape will show the default file name with a .txt extension.

"Finite Options" corresponds to any pull-down menu options a customer selected (e.g., small, medium, large, or x-large).

"Freeform Options" are for text-boxes where the customer typed in a sentence.

ShopSite Help and Resource Center
November 2, 2001
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