How can I integrate a cross reference search into my online store?

[mkreynolds]

I am hoping to incorporate a cross reference search in my store. Where customers can type in a competitive part number and our equivalent product would appear. I have an extensive database with this information (an excel document) but I am not sure how to incorporate it into the website. I would also need to be able to easily update it as our database grows. 

Thanks!

[ui-gab]

Hey,

Just thinking about this in a technical perspective.

Things you'd need to build:

1. a web accessible database using a proper database technology
2. a method to manage and modify that database as easily as possible for you, whether its add, update, delete, or recreate (depending on your use case)
3. code that connects to read the database and filters based on the user input

There maybe some alternative methods, like directly connecting to the excel/csv file and searching and parsing, but it's likely you'll need some server side backend code to read the csv file and search for the user input. Alternatively you can load the csv file onto the site and search through with frontend javascript, but if it's a huge file, I'd recommend against that.

Let me know what you think,

[NoelW1]

So,

The easiest way to do this is to use the barcode field for your x-ref codes. You can enter multiple codes separated by , or a space. Provided of course that you are not actually using barcodes.

Hope this helps.