Using catalogFill to Update Existing Products Instead of Duplicating Them

catalogFill imports work best when one field acts as a stable identifier for matching existing products. Without that, repeated imports tend to create duplicates instead of updating the intended records.

Typical mapping

$cf_config['content_row'] = array(
    array('', array(7, 'category')),
    array('', array('pagetitle', 'content')),
    array('', array('description', 'content')),
    array('', array(8, 'tv')),
    array('Label', array(23, 'tv')),
);

To update rather than duplicate, the import then checks a chosen field:

$cf_config['imp_chk_field'] = 'pagetitle';

Why this matters

If the check field is unstable or non-unique, imports become destructive. If it is stable and meaningful, catalogFill can behave much more like synchronization than blind insertion.

Recommended practice

Choose a field that stays unique across imports, and use that as the record-matching rule. If product titles may change, use a dedicated external ID instead of pagetitle.

This one decision has more impact on import quality than almost any template or mapping detail around it.