Am I supposed encode descriptions before using DataPort???!?

[TruMan_1]

Some special characters are breaking my whole DataPort process when downloading via the XML option. Can the AbleCommerce team tell me and the countless other users with unanswered questions in here about how we are supposed to use DataPort with products that have "special" characters like &, quotes, tags, whatever? Do you really want us to encode all entries in the database? Why can't DataPort do this before starting importing/exporting objects? Do you really expect admin users to encode every entry they enter into the admin screens of AbleCommerce.

Please advise! Thanks.

[Naveed]

You do not need to encode tags and symbols like "<" or ">" . specially in Product.Description or html enabled fields. Not even the single quote or double quote characters need any type of encoding. DataPort do this while importing and exporting data. There might be some bug causing the issue. Can you please provide me an example to reproduce the issue?

[TruMan_1]

I spent the last few days trying to create a small sample of the problem, but there is a deeper problem with DataPort that stopped me in my tracks. I tried restoring the whole database to my development environment so I can create a small sample for you, but DataPort keeps timing out on exporting the "basic store data" ONLY when exporting Templates. So I am pretty sure there is a big problem with how DataPort is exporting ProductTemplates via XML (Store Download).

What I did was dump my product templates and fields from my database into CSV files for you to download here: http://66.203.195.59/public/misc/ProductTemplates.zip. See if the same problem happens with you.

Please let me know when you have downloaded it so I can take it off the web and where we should go from here. Thanks.

[Naveed]

Please let me know when you have downloaded it so I can take it off the web and where we should go from here.

I have downloaded the file and you can safely remove it.

DataPort keeps timing out on exporting the "basic store data" ONLY when exporting Templates

I have reviewed the data and found that there are about 1000 product templates and about 714107 ProductTemplateFields and surely this huge amount of data may cause a time out.

The only work around seems possible to reduce the data, or upgrade (or tweak) your system performance.