Database I/O Manager (DbIo)

DbIo emulates one of the more popular Zen Cart plugins — Easy Populate — providing "handlers" to easily input (import) data to your cart's database and output (export) that data via a comma-separated-value (CSV) or tab-delimited file. In the DbIo, a "handler" is responsible for all I/O actions required to support a specific operation … like importing a set of product specifications or exporting a list of customer orders.

Why emulate rather than contribute to the EP-4 plugin's development? Given the principles which guided DbIo's development:

1. Use Zen Cart's built-in processing, especially the database interfaces.
2. Use a class-based approach, enabling a higher degree of code reuse.
3. Let the database drive the data; use the database settings to guide "proper" input processing.
4. Keep the data-pool consistent; broadly define the character-encoding of the .CSV repositories.
5. Keep to, where possible, the EP-4 interface described in its wiki.
6. Multi-language awareness.
7. Be data-driven. If you've installed a plugin that simply adds a field to an existing table (like products or orders), that field is a candidate for any I/O operation on that database table without additional coding.

… the DbIo processing is a revolutionary spin-off of Easy Populate; any differences between the EP-4 and DbIo handling are identified in the plugin's readme.

Starting with v1.2.0, the DbIo includes a tool through which you can customize your Products or Orders exports, selecting only the fields you are interested in and identifying the order in which those fields are output!