Importing Existing Users

[dadkind]

Hello All,
I need to import my existing users into my AC database.
I have their emails and clear-text passwords.
What is the easiest way to create new user accounts from my old user DB?

Thanks,
-tomas

[jmestep]

If you don't need them to go into a defined group, the easiest way is csv via the dataport.
Put the password into the PasswordPlainText field. You can see what column you need in the dataport utility documentation at wiki.AbleCommerce.com.
You can download existing users from the new site (maybe just an admin user) in csv format and then use that as a template for your upload.

[dadkind]

Cool. Thanks for the info!

-tomas

If you don't need them to go into a defined group, the easiest way is csv via the dataport.
Put the password into the PasswordPlainText field. You can see what column you need in the dataport utility documentation at wiki.AbleCommerce.com.
You can download existing users from the new site (maybe just an admin user) in csv format and then use that as a template for your upload.

[dadkind]

OK. So I downloaded the DataPort utility only to find that there is some problem with versioning.

Our site is on 7.0.2 and the Dataport is 7.0.34. But I'm getting this error:

Warning: Version mismatch, Store version '7.0.2' did not match the expected version '7.0'.
Please make sure that you are using the latest version of DataPort and the DataPort API. It is strongly recommended to update your store and get the compatible version of DataPort application.

There is a discussion about this in the Dataport forum. But now, I'm back to my original problem: How do I import existing users into a 7.0.2 system? Is there a way to "turn off" password encryption while we upload users?

Any ideas are welcome!

-tomas

If you don't need them to go into a defined group, the easiest way is csv via the dataport.
Put the password into the PasswordPlainText field. You can see what column you need in the dataport utility documentation at wiki.AbleCommerce.com.
You can download existing users from the new site (maybe just an admin user) in csv format and then use that as a template for your upload.

[jmestep]

If you are not working with a live store, you can try the current Dataport version. I have used it for a 7.0.2 store csv file and it worked OK. You're not out anything if it doesn't work- try it with a few users first. Concerning the passwords, if you put them into the plain text field in the csv file, they will be encrypted as the user is added to the store. You want that to happen- you don't want plain text passwords in the database.

[dadkind]

I've used both versions of the data port. Same error.

This is ticking me off, especially since this is a basic feature of the "other" carts out there: Plain Text Passwords, One-Way Hash, or encryption.

I could always write a small app to handle this, but this is the "no custom code" project, so it is not an option (yet).

Doh!

-tomas

If you are not working with a live store, you can try the current Dataport version. I have used it for a 7.0.2 store csv file and it worked OK. You're not out anything if it doesn't work- try it with a few users first. Concerning the passwords, if you put them into the plain text field in the csv file, they will be encrypted as the user is added to the store. You want that to happen- you don't want plain text passwords in the database.

[jmestep]

Did you actually continue after you got the error message? I just ignored the message and what I was doing worked.

[dadkind]

yes, actually.

It all seems to work, almost. The screen comes up in what seems a normal fashion (I've not used this before, so if something was off I wouldn't likely know).

I selected the existing user's table for export and then clicked "Save" (or whatever the button said) but no output file was actually created (I can't recall if any additional messages were displayed).

Although as I type this I just realized that my target output should probably be relative to the webserver, not the machine on which the Datapor is running (?? maybe??).

Anyway, no success yet.

-tomas

Did you actually continue after you got the error message? I just ignored the message and what I was doing worked.

[jmestep]

No, the output would be your computer where the dataport is. You select csv or xml format and enter a name for the file and browse to where you want to save it before you continue.

[dhenson]

jmestep - first off, thanks for all the time you put into helping people on these boards. Your posts have helped me quite a bit over a three month deployment period for a large ecommerce site.

So...with that being said, there could be all sort of arguments for storing plaintext passwords, as wall as for not storing plaintext passwords. A few examples come to mind...helping elderly non-web type people get logged in when they call customer service, logging in as people to view things as they do, etc.

In any case, wise or otherwise, if a person has a business need to store the passwords in a way that they can be retrieved (plaintext or otherwise), can anyone find an option?

I want to use the AC database to authenticate people in a unified way with another product(BlogEngine.Net in this case) using a custom forms authentication module that I write. It is a separate web application, so does not have the zillion able commerce .dlls available in that app. Would be a total nightmare to try to run both in the same app, need to keep them separate.

Any option out there for this? All I could come up with was to add custom code to store the password in a separate table when people register or update the password.

Thanks. The boards here are great.

[jmestep]

There are some fields in the user table that aren't used now- I'm guessing they were put in to match what a standard .net user/member provider contains. They are exported in a .csv export from the dataport and are part of the Able User object, so you could store the password in one of those fields, but if you take charge card payments online, that would be violating the PCI standards. Fields are PasswordQuestion, PasswordAnswer, Comments, Nickname.
An admin can logon as a customer to create an order by finding the customer in the users and clicking to make an order. (I thought there was a feature "Log on as.. " but I can't find it now. Or the admin can reset the password. Or maybe store a user password hint to give the user if they call in.

[dadkind]

OK. Finally got my users imported. But I had to jump through some hoops and found some questionable behavior in the DataPort app.

1. Downloaded the users from my DEV box, to get the CSV file structure.
2. Used MSAccess to append my old users to the list
3. Uploaded the CSV to my staging server on GoDaddy (no problems at all uploading).

Based on this behavior, it seems that the problem only appears when exporting data on a shared hosting environment like GoDaddy.
Which further indicates that the DataPort application needs to be checked for
1. Use in a shared hosting/medium trust envrionment
2. Writing temp files to an "off-limits" folder (like %TEMP%)
3. Something else ???

Anyway, users uploaded.

Thanks for all your help and attention!

-tomas

There are some fields in the user table that aren't used now- I'm guessing they were put in to match what a standard .net user/member provider contains. They are exported in a .csv export from the dataport and are part of the Able User object, so you could store the password in one of those fields, but if you take charge card payments online, that would be violating the PCI standards. Fields are PasswordQuestion, PasswordAnswer, Comments, Nickname.
An admin can logon as a customer to create an order by finding the customer in the users and clicking to make an order. (I thought there was a feature "Log on as.. " but I can't find it now. Or the admin can reset the password. Or maybe store a user password hint to give the user if they call in.

[jmestep]

I've used the dataport (various versions) with site on a shared server at drundo.net and haven't had a problem. They run in medium trust there also.