Manually retyping supplier price lists, photos and descriptions is slow and full of errors. We connect your supplier to your Phoca Cart online shop on Joomla 6+ so that new products, prices with your margin, stock levels, images and translated descriptions reach your shop automatically. We take care of the entire supplier data integration, from feed analysis and import setup to regular automatic updates.
- XML, CSV, Excel and JSON
- Prices with margin and VAT
- Stock and availability
- Images and thumbnails
- Translation into Czech
- Automatic, on a schedule
No-obligation enquiry What the import can do
- 7 data formats. XML, CSV, Excel, JSON and more
- 4 translation services. DeepL, Google, Claude, LibreTranslate
- 1× each text is translated and paid for only once
Supplier integration as a service: what we do for you
You are not buying off-the-shelf software that you will spend weeks setting up and fine-tuning. You get a ready-made supplier integration: we take care of data analysis, product import setup, automatic scheduling and ongoing monitoring. Meanwhile, you can focus on sales, marketing and customers.
Supplier feed analysis
We identify the data format and structure and go through the categories, prices, images and text language. You know in advance what can be taken from the feed automatically and where your decision is needed.
Custom import setup
Field mapping, conversion of supplier categories to your shop's categories, margin and rounding rules, automatic translation, image downloads and description formatting.
Automatic updates
We schedule the import in the Joomla Task Scheduler. New products, prices and stock then reach your shop on their own, even several times a day.
Monitoring and further development
We monitor the import history, adjust the settings when the supplier changes its feed, and connect further suppliers as needed.
Connecting supplier data to your online shop
Every supplier sends data differently. One has an XML feed for the Czech price comparison site Heureka, another a price list in Excel, a third an API with an access key.
The import handles all common formats and recognises the file structure by itself. It detects the format, character encoding and column separator from the content, not from the file extension. Connecting supplier data to your shop therefore does not require the supplier to change anything.
Where we take the data from
- A feed at the supplier's address. HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS, including feeds protected by a username and password or an API key in the header.
- A file on your server's FTP. If the supplier uploads price lists to your server, the import can pick the newest one by itself.
- A price list from an email. You simply select the file when you run the import in the administration.
- Compressed files. ZIP and GZ archives are unpacked automatically.
Supported formats
Files are read in a stream, so even a feed with hundreds of thousands of products will not overload the server's memory.
| Format | Typical use |
|---|---|
| XML | Feeds for the Czech price comparison sites Heureka and Zboží.cz and for Google Merchant, as well as any custom supplier XML, including data stored in attributes |
| CSV, TSV, TXT | Exports from accounting and warehouse systems; the separator and encoding are detected automatically, and values may even contain line breaks |
| Excel XLSX | Wholesale price lists, read directly without additional libraries |
| OpenDocument ODS | Spreadsheets from LibreOffice and OpenOffice Calc |
| JSON and JSON Lines | Supplier APIs and modern e-commerce systems |
| Excel XLS (older) | With the PhpSpreadsheet library, or after saving as XLSX or CSV |
| ZIP and GZ archives | Unpacked automatically; the product file is taken from the ZIP |
Czech, Polish and German characters are converted correctly, even from older encodings (Windows-1250, ISO-8859-2) or from UTF-16. The import also finds data stored in XML attributes and recognises the main image from the supplier's flag.
Automatic product imports
A supplier integration only makes sense if it runs by itself.
That is why we set up the automatic product import in the Joomla 6 Task Scheduler, triggered by a cron job on the server or by a webcron, depending on what your hosting allows.
- Updates to suit your needs, for example stock and prices every four hours and the full catalogue with new products once a day overnight.
- Large imports run in steps, so they do not hit PHP or hosting time limits. An interrupted import resumes where it stopped and does not read the feed again from the beginning.
- Unchanged products are skipped, so frequent updates do not burden the server and nothing is needlessly overwritten or retranslated.
- Each supplier has its own schedule. Two imports from the same supplier never run at the same time.
- The import has no public URL through which an outsider could trigger it.
- A detailed run history: what was created, changed or skipped and why, including warnings when something changes on the supplier's side.
What the product import into Phoca Cart can do
Behind the service is our own import extension for Joomla 6 and Phoca Cart, which we develop and maintain ourselves. This means we can adapt it even to unusual suppliers. Here is an overview of what it will do for your shop.
Field mapping without programming
The import itself suggests which feed column belongs in which Phoca Cart field, and it understands Czech, Slovak, Polish, German and English column names. Values can be built from templates ({BRAND} {NAME}), filled in with a default value, or taken from a specific language variant in the XML. Parameters such as colour or material are converted into product specifications.
Supplier categories → your categories
You assign supplier categories to your shop's categories on one clear screen, including in bulk. The import suggests placements based on products you already have in the shop (matching EAN or product code) and shows foreign-language categories with a Czech translation. It also supports keyword-based rules and can automatically create an entire category tree.
Prices, margins and VAT
Currency conversion (EUR, PLN and others), margins by brand, category or price band, a fixed mark-up and a minimum profit per item. It handles VAT correctly, including reduced rates, and rounds the price to a "nice" amount, such as 119 Kč. It can use the supplier's recommended retail price as the crossed-out price.
Stock and availability
It takes the stock quantity directly and converts text availability ("skladem", "na dotaz", "in stock") into quantities. It can automatically hide sold-out items, and it will not create or publish products without a price.
Product images
Images are downloaded in parallel, checked to make sure they really are images, resized and saved under an SEO-friendly file name based on the product name. You can limit the number of images per product, Phoca Cart thumbnails are generated during the import, and large catalogues are filled in gradually in timed batches.
Automatic translation
Names, descriptions, parameters and categories are translated by DeepL, Google Translate, Claude or LibreTranslate. Each text is translated and paid for only once; subsequent imports take the translation from the cache. A character limit per run protects you from an unexpected bill, and a new product is never created in a foreign language.
Multilingual online shop
For multilingual Phoca Cart shops, the import also writes texts to the translation tables. Descriptions, meta data and parameters are therefore visible straight away, without saving each product manually.
Clean descriptions and formatting
Scripts, styles and other foreign code are always removed from supplier descriptions. For each description you choose how much formatting remains: safe HTML, basic formatting only without links and images, or plain text.
Updating existing products
The import matches products you already have in the shop by product code (SKU) or EAN. You decide what is updated for them, typically price and stock. Manually edited names and descriptions remain untouched.
Products the supplier has discontinued
Products that disappear are hidden, have their stock set to zero, or are deleted, and they reappear when they return to the feed. A safety threshold stops the action if the supplier sends an incomplete file. Products you had in the shop before are never deleted, only hidden.
Multiple suppliers in one shop
Each supplier has its own profile with rules, a schedule and a code prefix, so products from two suppliers with the same code never get mixed up. A finished configuration can be exported and reused.
Security
Protection against malicious code in the feed (XSS), abuse of downloads (SSRF) and dangerous XML (XXE). Only genuine images are downloaded, and passwords and API keys are never written to the logs.
Performance for large catalogues
Proven in live operation on a feed with more than 21,500 products. Files are read in a stream and data is written to the database in bulk, so even the first import of a large catalogue is fast.
Checks before go-live
A test import of the first few dozen products, new products and categories created as unpublished first for review, source analysis with a data preview, and a clear run history with statistics.
An import that thinks about your shop's SEO
Thousands of new products are a chance to win search traffic, but only if the product pages are in good order. That is why the automatic import also takes care of what search engines and site speed reward.
Readable product URLs
The URL (alias) of a new product is created from its name, extended with its code where needed, and it is always unique within the shop.
SEO-friendly image names
Files are named after the product, e.g. iphone-15-case-black.jpg, not after a number from the supplier's database.
Fast pages
Large images are resized during the import and Phoca Cart thumbnails are generated in advance, so the first visit to a category does not wait for them to be created.
Clean description HTML
No inline styles, scripts or Word clutter. The H1 heading stays reserved for the product name, and supplier links get nofollow or are removed entirely.
Czech texts and meta descriptions
Foreign-language names, descriptions, parameters and meta descriptions are translated into Czech, for customers and search engines alike.
Same URLs when products return
A product the supplier temporarily discontinues is hidden instead of deleted. When it comes back into the range, it reappears at its original URL.
How the integration works
We connect your online shop to a supplier in six steps. The import only goes live after a test import that we check together.
- Step 1
No-obligation consultation
Send us a link to the supplier's feed or a sample price list, along with your shop's address. A few sentences about what you expect from the import are enough.
- Step 2
Analysis and proposal
We go through the supplier's data and propose field mapping, categories and pricing rules. For foreign-language feeds, we calculate how many characters will be translated.
- Step 3
Setup
We set up the import directly in your Joomla: fields, categories, margins, translation, images and description formatting.
- Step 4
Test import
We import a sample of products as unpublished and check the prices, texts, categories and images together.
- Step 5
Go-live
We import the full catalogue and set up automatic updates through the Joomla Task Scheduler and cron.
- Step 6
Monitoring and development
We keep an eye on the import history, adjust the settings when the supplier changes its feed, and connect further suppliers.
Who automatic product import is for
- Owners of online shops on Joomla 6 and Phoca Cart who currently add supplier products by hand.
- Dropshipping and selling from the supplier's warehouse, where stock and prices must be accurate, or you end up selling goods that do not exist.
- Online shops with foreign suppliers: foreign-language texts, prices in euros or zloty and a different category structure.
- Shops with several suppliers, each sending data in a different format.
- B2B sellers with Excel price lists that arrive by email.
- Migration from another e-commerce platform: you export the products to CSV or XML and we convert them into Phoca Cart, including images.
Manual entry vs automatic import
| Situation | Manually | With automatic import |
|---|---|---|
| New product | Photos, description, price and category by hand, sometimes tens of minutes per item | Created automatically with images, description, parameters and category |
| Supplier changes a price | You have to spot the change and update the price | Applied at the next update, including your margin |
| An item sells out | You keep selling what is not in stock | Stock is updated, and sold-out items can be hidden |
| Foreign-language texts | You translate them by hand or leave them in a foreign language | Automatic translation, each text paid for only once |
| Thousands of products | Practically unmanageable | Tens of thousands of products in a single feed |
| Errors and typos | Easy to overlook | Margin, VAT and rounding rules apply equally to all products |
21,500 products from a foreign wholesaler
An online shop selling mobile phone accessories on Joomla 6 and Phoca Cart wanted to offer the entire range of a Polish wholesaler without creating a single product by hand.
- Products
- 21,508
- Characters translated
- 6.4 million
- Disk space
- 11 → 6 GB
- Starting point
An XML feed with more than 21,500 products and a size of over 70 MB, English names and descriptions, 312 Polish categories, prices in euros excluding VAT and an average of seven images per product.
- Solution
We mapped the Polish categories to the shop's categories, with Czech translations of their names and suggestions based on EAN. Prices are converted from euros with margin, VAT and rounding, DeepL translates the texts into Czech, and a maximum of four images is downloaded for each product. New products are first created as unpublished for review.
- Result
21,508 products in the shop from a single import and over 6.4 million characters translated once and for all; subsequent updates retranslate nothing. Limiting the number of images reduced the estimated disk space required from approximately 11 to 6 GB.
Why entrust the integration to us
Our own extension, no black box
We develop and maintain the import extension for Joomla 6 and Phoca Cart ourselves, so we can adapt it even to an unusual supplier.
Your data stays with you
The import runs directly in your Joomla on your hosting. There is no external platform the data has to pass through, apart from the translation service you choose.
Specialists in Joomla and Phoca Cart
We understand VAT-inclusive pricing in Phoca Cart, the translation tables of multilingual shops and image thumbnails.
Quality and security
Extensive automated testing and verification on real feeds with tens of thousands of products.
Frequently asked questions about product import into Phoca Cart
Which data formats and sources can you connect?
XML (Heureka, Zboží.cz, Google Merchant and custom supplier XML), CSV and TSV, Excel XLSX, OpenDocument ODS, JSON and JSON Lines, including files compressed in ZIP or GZ. We process older Excel XLS files with the PhpSpreadsheet library or after conversion to XLSX.
We can download data from the supplier's address (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS, also with a login or API key), read it from a file the supplier uploads to your server's FTP, or from a price list you receive by email.
How often can products be updated?
As often as you need, for example stock and prices every four hours and the full catalogue once a day overnight. The import is triggered by the Joomla Task Scheduler. Unchanged products are skipped, so even frequent updates do not burden the server.
Will the import overwrite my manual changes?
No, unless you want it to. For existing products, only what you specify is updated, typically price, stock and publication status. Manually edited names, descriptions and images remain. Categories can be set so that they are only added to, keeping your manual assignments (Sale, New…) in place.
What happens to products the supplier stops offering?
Depending on the settings, they are hidden, have their stock set to zero, or are deleted. Hidden products reappear automatically when they return to the feed. If the supplier sends an incomplete file by mistake, a safety threshold stops the action. Products you had in the shop before, which the import merely took over, are never deleted, only hidden.
How much does automatic translation of descriptions cost?
Translation is charged by the chosen service (DeepL, Google, Claude) according to the number of characters. However, each text is translated only once and subsequent imports take it from the cache, so you mainly pay for the first import and for new products. Before launch, we calculate how many characters the feed contains, and a character limit per run protects you from an unexpected bill.
Can you connect several suppliers at once?
Yes. Each supplier has its own profile with its own margin rules, categories, code prefix and update schedule. Products from two suppliers with the same code therefore never get mixed up.
Which versions of Joomla and Phoca Cart does the import work with?
Joomla 6 with the current version of Phoca Cart 6, including multilingual shops. We assess shops on Joomla 5 individually.
Is the supplier integration secure?
The import has no public URL through which an outsider could trigger it. Supplier data is cleaned of scripts, styles and malicious links, and only genuine images are downloaded, and only from public addresses. Passwords and API keys are never written to the logs.
How long does the integration take?
It depends on the supplier. We can set up a well-structured feed with Czech texts quickly, while foreign-language feeds with hundreds of categories take longer to prepare. We always state the timeline in our quote, and a test import always takes place before go-live.
What if the supplier changes the feed structure?
Every import run is recorded in the history together with any warnings, so we will spot the change. We adjust the mapping and the import carries on. Until then, nothing is deleted: the safety threshold prevents products from being hidden or deleted en masse.
Do I need to change hosting for the import?
Usually not. Standard hosting for Joomla 6 with PHP 8.3 is enough. Cron is useful for regular runs, and if your hosting does not offer it, we use a webcron.
We can connect your supplier too
Send us a link to the supplier's feed or a sample price list, your shop's address and an idea of your margins. We will get back to you with a proposed solution, a timeline and a no-obligation quote.
