after importing products into magento they dont show up catalog

Question

After i import the products into magento which appears to go smoothly no errors; the products aren't visible in the store. however if i go to any product and save(even without changing anything) it it is instantly available. Why are these products not visible right away...

Running the latest stable build.

Thanks

Answer 1

The best way to solve this problem programmatically is to

1. Import the product

2. Examine all the product's attributes via some custom code

3. Save the product

4. Examine all the product's attributes via some custom code

5. Compare the results of #2 and #4

6. Ensure your import process explicitly sets whatever attributes were missing in #2 but present in #4

Here's the snipping I'd use to examine the product attributes. Run this or something like it in a phtml template, custom controller, etc.

var_dump( 
Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
->getCollection()
->addAttributeToSelect('*')
->addAttributeToFilter('sku','SKUGOESHERE')
    ->getFirstItem()
->getData()
);

Answer 2

Make sure that you have gone into the admin interface and under System>Index Management select all and choose "Reindex" from the drop-down on top right. Execute.

Also, refresh the caching under System>Cache Management and for good measure, delete all the files in var/cache.

If that doesn't fix it, report back for more suggestions.

HTH, JD

Answer 3

Inspired from Alan Storm answer, but lower level.

1. Start from an empty database. Dump it to an SQL file labelled original.sql
2. Create manually one of your products.
3. Check it is visible.
4. Dump your database to a file labeled manual.sql
5. Overwrite your database by importing original.sql
6. Create a csv file to import the product you have chosen and import it.
7. Dump your database to a file labeled automatic.sql
8. Compare manual.sql and automatic.sql with each other. You should see where the problem relies.

Answer 4

For any one else who is having the is problem i sorted it by making sure you set the websiteid for the product, if you are using a custom script remember to add the following

$product->setWebsiteIds(array(Mage::app()->getStore(true)->getWebsite()->getId()));