New tool: Convert BrickOwl inventory to BrickStore BSX

Stragus

Hello World!

I put together a simple program to fetch your BrickOwl inventory through the API and save it as a BrickStore/BrickStock BSX file.

It's a very simple command line tool in the same style as BrickSync.
Step #1: Edit the file owl2bsx.conf.txt to specify your BrickOwl API key
Step #2: Execute owl2bsx
Step #3: Your BrickOwl inventory is downloaded and saved as brickowl.inventory.bsx

That's it, the file brickowl.inventory.bsx can then be opened in BrickStore/BrickStock. Is that easy enough?

Download:
http://www.bricksync.net/owl2bsx/

The package includes a file named brickmanager.catalog.bmc. This is a draft of my hybrid catalog for the upcoming inventory management software (there's a *lot* of data packed and compressed in that file).

Note that BrickSync users probably have no need for that tool, but BrickOwl-only sellers could find it useful. Let me know if you have any question!

DagsBricks

GUI? :-)

No, I'm not strictly that kind of person. I manage shell interfaces fine but you did ask a question.

Hoddie

Looks very useful, thanks.

Stragus

@DagsBricks That's a good point. I know GUIs are really lacking in my toolbox as a programmer, but darn, that stuff is boring.

For BrickManager, I have started creating a GUI from scratch in OpenGL. Now, that's more challenging... plus we'll be ready if we want BrickStore-style software with soft shadows, spherical harmonics or deferred shading!!1one (</sarcasm>...?)

thatspecialbrick

Thank you!

OvertheBrick

Thanks @Stragus, very useful.

What does the following warning mean?
WARNING: Skipping item, the catalog does not know the BOID xxxxxxx

Is this an item in the BO catalog that doesn't have a BLID mapping yet ?

Stragus

@weberemmanuel That's correct, the offline catalog database doesn't know the BLID for that BOID (if the BOID does have a BLID mapping, it didn't have one when I last updated the database... I'll have to update this package regularly).

Hoddie

I was playing around with this last night, one question, how do you re-upload the data back to BO without doubling your stock?

bluedragon

Set quantities to 0 on bsx file and upload using the merge function?

Hoddie

Aye maybe I'll give it a go.

unbrickable

thanks !

robernat

@Stagus
Excellent news, just downloaded the lot and unpacked owl2bsx, inventory downloaded and it is currently updating all pictures (takes a while), only about 10-15 items caused an error as not knowing a BLID, so fairly acceptable, based on 7300 lot's :-)

This is going to help me quite a lot, as when I decided to sync, I moved all my items in BL stockroom, then reactivated lot by lot, but I skipped the ones with less then 4 items per lot. Once in a while I would adjust some lot's when I was clearing lot's away from BL (after selling on BO) based on partnumbers, but I still have about 1600 lot's that are not active on BL. I can now filter the BSX by searching the ~tag, remove all others from the file, then reupload on BL, technicly they should try to merge with my stockroom lot's and tell me 'which' when consolidating. Will likely need to destroy the BL lot for each item, remove the ~tag, kill the lot on BO and use BLmaster afterwards. Sounds complicated but should be pretty fast compared to 'checking' lot by lot
I'll let you know how it goes.

Brickmaster will be tested later on, but looking forward to it :-)

Cheers, Eric

Stragus

@RobErNat Cool.

Regarding the 10-15 items it failed to translate, I still have a list of several thousands BLIDs ready to submit, said list being automatically generated by software cross-referencing databases.

I was making a pause until Lawrence fully processed my past catalog submissions... but he seems to process the most recent submissions first (first-in, last-out), so I think that may take a while. :-<

Hoddie

@Stragus, I wonder if you could have this tool spit out a .txt file with the list of parts that it skips when downloading the store's inventory.

WARNING: Skipping item, we have no BLID match for the BOID 268041.
(etc.)

That would be incredibly useful.

Hoddie

Yeah, ignore me, I see it already does. Many thanks

Stragus

There is a log, yes.

That database hasn't been updated in a while, I'll try to upload a new version later today.

Stragus

Hi all,

Here's a little update for owl2bsx: it's now also able to fetch and save BrickOwl orders as BSX (both your store's orders and placed orders):
http://www.bricksync.net/owl2bsx/

In the latest version, the owl2bsx.conf.txt file has some new options, edit as desired:

// Count of days of past store orders to fetch
brickowl.fetchstoreorders = 30;

// Count of days of past placed orders to fetch
brickowl.fetchplacedorders = 30;

That's all, have fun.

bluedragon

Very useful, thanks @Stragus!

brickcomplete

Thank you Again Stragus for adding this feature on weekends! This saved me about 15 hours of manually work!!

PickinBricks

how do I execute owl2bsx? after placing my brickowl api key betwenn the '''' marks???

Stragus

how do I execute owl2bsx? after placing my brickowl api key betwenn the '''' marks???

There's an executable named "owl2bsx".

On Windows, double-click it.

On Linux and OSX, run it as ./owl2bsx from a terminal. Depending on your Window Manager, you may double-click or such, as long as the Current Working Directory is set to wherever the executable is (otherwise, it won't find the database and the configuration file).

bricksinbins

I'm getting a lot of item skipping because of no matching BLID, around 100 or so. Is there an update available? If not, how can I fix this?

DadsAfol

Do the research on each item and submit it to BO using the "edit catalog" link at the bottom of the page.

bricksinbins

Do the research on each item and submit it to BO using the "edit catalog" link at the bottom of the page.

That was my first thought also but maybe I'm doing something wrong. I select BL ID on the edit page and type the BL ID there. When I click Submit I get a message saying it looks like I didn't add anything new.
So how do I add a BL ID? Looking at many other parts, I can't find one that actually lists a BL ID also. I must be missing something here...

Stellar

@bricksinbins After typing the BL ID you have to click outside somewhere before submit.
BL ID aren't shown.

Stragus

owl2bsx uses an offline database for ID conversions, file provided with the executable.

Unfortunately, that database hasn't been updated in a while... but this is complicated by the fact that BL now doesn't let people fetch their catalog data freely. I know how to work around that, but I have been quite busy with other matters the last few months.

bricksinbins

owl2bsx uses an offline database for ID conversions, file provided with the executable.

Unfortunately, that database hasn't been updated in a while... but this is complicated by the fact that BL now doesn't let people fetch their catalog data freely. I know how to work around that, but I have been quite busy with other matters the last few months.

So are you saying that adding the IDs to BO won't make a difference then?

Any chance you'd have time to make an update again?

JayB-SoCal

I think everyone has to at some point accept that BL & BO are businesses and essentially compete. The community creates solutions but as time goes on there will be a greater & greater difficult to keep tools maintained that allow interchangeability. I haven't used the tool yet, not need yet, but it seems like Stragus has put together something pretty useful- though I can imaging the extra effort it takes to keep the data & data translations up-to-date.

leopard37

Stragus,

I echo bricksinbins question. Is there no way to do this in an individual item level, not sure how to fix that error. If you have a step by step on how to do this with catalog entries. I will put my gaps in at least.

Tyson.

JayB-SoCal

Can someone send me a small sample of 2 files with discrepancies? Maybe I can build a quick tool to allow individual changes & re-output to help fill this need? Just need to know what the desired "before & after" looks like to those having issues. Just a small sample set, though, if possible - I have a day job so would need to fit it in some late evening.

leopard37

Quote from Bricksync:

WARNING: BrickOwl HTTP Error - Saving server reply (341+50 bytes) at path "data/errors-2017-03-06/00272.txt".
WARNING: Error creating BrickOwl item "4215", color 15.
WARNING: It's possible we may have cached an old BOID for this BLID. Try updating the BLID<->BOID translation cache by typing owlqueryblid -f 4215.
WARNING: The operation was rejected by BrickOwl. A further sync will attempt the operation again.

Tyson.

minithingsforlife

It looks like you have listed an item with Undetermined stud type on Bricklink. BrickOwl does not support undetermined. You will need to resist it with the correct variant.

Graham

Without totally hi-jacking the thread, hopefully,

I really need to re-open on BL, I tried to use BrickSync a good while back, but ended up butchering my inventory on BL - which I then deleted.

Don't know if it was gremlins or my being computer illiterate (likely the latter)

@Stragus Is there a recent version of BrickSync? The issue before was the size of my inventory - has there been any improvements that will make it easier(or possible)?

Should I switch to another OS? currently using Mac "Sierra"

It seems that "cooperation" between the two sites is falling further, is this eventually going to make it very difficult or even impossible to sell on both venues, with the same inventory?

Thanks G

Graham

Correction!!

It was something called BrickPacker that messed up my inventory NOT Bricksync!!

bricksinbins

I'm also looking to open on BL so future compatibility is a concern. Not my only concern though, things seem overall a lot more rough around the edges there. But like most things, deal with the problems when they pop up. Can't worry too much about what might happen.