BAS Exchange for OpenCart — products, prices, stock and orders in sync with BAS

BAS Exchange for OpenCart connects an OpenCart store with BAS over the CommerceML 2 protocol. Products, prices and stock are kept in BAS and the store receives them by itself: no CSV or Excel exports, no retyping prices by hand, and no “in stock” on the site for goods that are already gone from the warehouse. In the other direction (Pro), BAS collects orders from the store and sends their statuses back.

BAS starts every exchange: in its website exchange settings you enter the address, user and password from the Connection tab, and BAS then sends the catalog and offers and collects orders on schedule or on demand. The store answers exactly the way the protocol expects. One module, three builds: OpenCart 4.x, 3.x and 2.3.

Running WordPress? There is BAS Exchange for WooCommerce with the same protocol and the same settings.

What the buyer sees

The buyer sees on the site what is in BAS — and never sees the exchange itself:

• Current prices and availability. The price from the chosen price type and the stock are updated with every exchange.
• The catalog as in your accounting. BAS groups become categories with the same nesting (top-level ones in the storefront menu), properties become attributes on the product’s Specification tab.
• Pictures and description come with the product; a repeated exchange does not multiply image copies in image/catalog.
• Sizes and colours (Pro) — a required “Size / Colour” option with its own stock and price for each value; a value that is out of stock cannot be bought. The special price is shown next to the crossed-out regular one.
• A product marked as deleted in BAS is disabled and disappears from the storefront.

What the admin gets

Extensions → Modules → BAS Exchange, five tabs: Connection, Catalog, Orders (Pro), Log and manual import, and Licence.

• Connected in a minute. The module creates the address, user and password on install — you only copy them into BAS. The user and password are separate; this is not an OpenCart admin account.
• Control over fields. Name, description, SKU and barcode, categories, images, attributes, manufacturer — each field can be handed to BAS or kept editable in the store. Texts go into every store language or just one, if you translate the others by hand.
• Price types and warehouses are taken from the BAS files and listed in the settings — no need to guess the names.
• The log records every exchange step with its result: what came in, how many items were created and updated, what was skipped and why. The full history is in cc_basx.log in the store’s log folder.
• Manual import — upload import.xml, offers.xml or a zip with pictures right in the admin. Handy for the first load and for checking a problem file.

Pro: orders, characteristics, warehouses, special prices

• Orders to BAS. During an order exchange BAS collects new and changed orders with the chosen statuses: buyer, shipping address, phone and e-mail, product lines with BAS ids (including the characteristic), shipping and fees as services, discounts and coupons spread over the lines.
• Statuses from BAS. Paid, the final status, cancelled and your own rules like “Відвантажено = Complete”. The change goes through the core OpenCart order history — with a history entry, like a manual status change.
• An honest “paid” flag. For cash on delivery only in a completed status; for prepaid orders in the statuses you ticked.
• Characteristics. OpenCart has no variations, so product characteristics from BAS become one required option with its own stock and price difference; the product price is the cheapest characteristic.
• Special price from a second price type (for example “Sale”) — when it is lower than the regular one.
• Warehouses: stock in the store is the sum of the ticked warehouses only.
• Full upload: products that came from BAS before but are missing from a full upload — disable or set stock to 0. When they are back in BAS, they reappear on the storefront. Products added in the store by hand are never touched.

How it works — step by step

1. BAS calls the exchange address with the user and password and gets a session.
2. The store tells BAS whether it accepts zip archives and how big the file parts may be — within what your server accepts.
3. BAS sends the files: import.xml (groups, properties, products), offers.xml (prices and stock) and pictures — in parts or as one archive.
4. The store imports the file in steps: when the step time runs out it answers “progress”, and BAS repeats the request until the import is finished.
5. Every product, category and characteristic gets its BAS id in the module’s tables — later exchanges update them instead of creating new ones.
6. Exchange files are deleted right after import; the log keeps the result of every step.
7. Pro: during an order exchange BAS gets a file with orders, confirms receipt, and next time gets only new and changed ones. Statuses from BAS come back in a separate file.

How much it costs

Pro — 1,290 UAH, one payment, lifetime licence. No yearly fees: the module and the Pro features stay yours. One licence for one domain covers all three builds — OpenCart 4.x, 3.x and 2.3. Moving the store to another domain — press “Release the licence from this store” on the Licence tab of the old store and activate the key on the new one.

Trial first, then payment. The free 7-day Pro trial is switched on with a button on the Licence tab, no card needed. The trial never starts by itself: a fresh install is the plain free version. When the trial ends only the Pro features switch off; catalog, prices and stock keep exchanging.

Under the hood

• Streaming XML. Files are read one element at a time instead of loading the whole file into memory, so a large catalog does not hit memory_limit. Files in windows-1251 are read too.
• Resume where it stopped. The import state of each file is kept between steps; a repeated BAS request continues instead of starting over.
• Own link tables with BAS ids for categories, products, characteristics, attributes and images: no duplicates on repeated exchanges or after renames. OpenCart tables only get ordinary catalog rows.
• Security. A separate user and password for BAS; file names are checked (no “../” and no executable extensions), zip archives are unpacked with protection against leaving the folder.
• Files outside the public folder. The module picks a folder outside the site root for exchange files and deletes XML right after import — order files included, since they hold personal data. The admin shows where the files are; another folder can be set with the CC_BASX_EXCHANGE_DIR constant in config.php.
• Own error handler. The exchange runs under its own error handler: OpenCart 4 redirects to an error page on any PHP warning, while BAS must get a protocol answer.
• Cleans up after itself. With “Delete data on uninstall” ticked, uninstalling removes its tables, log and exchange folder; the products, categories and orders stay.

How to install

1. OpenCart 4: Extensions → Installer → upload cc_basx.ocmod.zip (do not rename the archive) and press Install. OpenCart 3: Extensions → Installer → cc_basx-oc3.ocmod.zip, then Extensions → Modifications → Refresh. OpenCart 2.3: upload the contents of the upload/ folder from cc_basx-oc2.ocmod.zip to the store root (FTP or the hosting file manager).
2. Extensions → Extensions → Modules → BAS Exchange → Install, then Edit.
3. Connection tab: copy the exchange address, user and password. The curl command on the same tab checks that the address answers “success”.
4. In BAS open the website exchange settings (CommerceML protocol) and paste these three values.
5. On the Catalog tab choose which fields BAS may update, and keep “Match by SKU” on if the store already has products.
6. One exchange first, then warehouses. Run the exchange in BAS and check the log. After the first exchange the Catalog tab lists the price types and warehouses — choose the price type (for Pro also the special price type and warehouses) and save.
7. For Pro: paste the licence key from the e-mail after payment or start the 7-day trial on the Licence tab, then switch on order exchange on the Orders tab.