1.3. The Product Database
Each product being sold should be given a product code, usually referred to as SKU, a short code that identifies the product on the ordering page and in the catalog. The products.txt file is a ASCII-delimited list of all the product codes, along with an arbitrary number of fields which must contain at least the fields description and price (or however the PriceField and DescriptionField directives have been set). Any additional information needed in the catalog can be placed in any arbitrary field. See Interchange Database Capability for details on the format.
Field names can be case-sensitive depending on the underlying database type. Unless there are fields with the names "description" and "price" field, set the PriceField and DescriptionField directives to use the [item-price] and [item-description] tags.
The product code, or SKU, must be the first field in the line, and must be unique. Product codes can contain the characters A-Za-z0-9, along with hyphen (-), underscore (_), pound sign/hash mark (#), slash (/), and period (.). Note that slash (/) will interfere with on-the-fly page references. Avoid if at all possible.
The words should be separated by one of the approved delimiting schemes (TAB, PIPE, or CSV), and are case-sensitive in some cases. If the case of the "description" or "price" fields have been modified, the PriceField and DescriptionField directives must be appropriately set.
Note: CSV is not recommended as the scheme for the products database. It is much slower than TAB- or PIPE-delimited, and dramatically reduces search engine functionality. No field-specific searches are possible. Using CSV for any small database that will not be searched is fine.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The field names must be on the first line of the products.txt file. These field names must match exactly the field names of the [item-field] tags in the catalog pages, or the Interchange server will not access them properly. Field names can contain the characters A-Za-z0-9 and underscore (_).
More than one database may be used as a products database. If the catalog directive, ProductFiles, is set to a space-separated list of valid Interchange database identifiers, those databases will be searched (in the order specified) for any items that are ordered, or for product information (as in the [price code] and [field code] tags).
When the database table source file (i.e., products.txt) changes after import or edit, a DBM database is re-built upon the next user access. No restart of the server is necessary.
If changing the database on-the-fly, it is recommended that the file be locked while it is being modified. Interchange's supplied import routines do this.