Guidance Needed for Migrating Free Text Attributes to List Type

Q&A
1

I am writing to seek your advice on a migration task we are planning. Currently, many of our filterable attributes on our website are in free text format. To enhance the user experience and filtering capabilities on our site, we need to convert these attributes to list type.

We understand that performing this migration efficiently is crucial to minimizing the impact on our daily operations. Therefore, we would greatly appreciate any recommendations and best practices you could provide for carrying out this process.

Specifically, we would like to know:

  • What are the recommended steps to identify and migrate free text attributes to list type?
  • Which tools would you suggest using to facilitate this migration?
  • Are there methods to automate this process and ensure data consistency?
  • How can we ensure that the migration does not negatively affect site usability during and after the process?

Thank you in advance for your guidance and any additional resources you can provide.

We look forward to your response.

Best regards,

2

Get ready to dust off those SQL books!

Assuming that while your attribute fields are free text there are a limited number of values submitted. If each product_attribute_value is different, what you are asking may not be possible.

So, assuming there are a small number of possible values,

  1. in the db select all values for that attribute, grouped by value or distinct.
  2. create an import, creating a new list attribute and adding the values
  3. Extract the product_attribute_values giving the SKU/identifier and the attribute value from the free text attribute
  4. Create product update import feed to assign the new attribute to the products and set the new value from the dropdown

I would then delete the free text attribute so that going forward the only option is to use the dropdown.

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