EShop Migration Adapter

The EShop Migration Adapter is the source connector for the J2Commerce Migrator that lets you move your JoomDonation EShop store into J2Commerce 6. The adapter reads your existing EShop tables, transforms them into the J2Commerce format, and writes them into the correct J2Commerce tables — without touching or modifying your original EShop data at any point.

Requirements

• PHP 8.3 or later
• Joomla! 6.0 or later
• J2Commerce 6 installed and enabled
• J2Commerce Migrator component installed
• EShop 4.x or 5.x tables present in your database (the component does not need to be enabled, but the tables must still exist)

tip

Run the migration on a staging copy of your site first. This lets you verify every product, order, and customer without any risk to your live store. Only migrate the live site after you are satisfied with the staging result.

Get the Adapter

The EShop adapter is sold separately from the core J2Commerce package. It is available from the J2Commerce Extensions Store.

Step 1: Log in to your account at j2commerce.com and open your customer downloads area.

Step 2: Search for EShop Migrator Adapter and click View Files -> Download Now to get the adapter zip.

Install the Adapter

In your Joomla admin, go to System -> Install -> Extensions.

Upload the EShop Migration Adapter file or use the Install from URL option.

You will see a success message confirming installation.

info

The adapter checks that J2Commerce is installed before it installs. If J2Commerce is not found, installation will be refused. Install J2Commerce first, then come back to install the adapter.

Enable the Adapter

After installation the adapter is automatically enabled. To confirm or re-enable it:

1. Go to System -> Manage -> Plugins.
2. Search for eshop in the plugin list.
3. Look for J2Commerce Migrator — EShop Adapter.
4. If the status column shows a red X, click it to enable the plugin. It will turn into a green checkmark.

What Gets Migrated

The adapter migrates the following data from your EShop store to J2Commerce:

EShop Data	What It Becomes in J2Commerce
Categories	Joomla content categories linked to J2Commerce
Manufacturers	J2Commerce manufacturer records with a linked address and description of the article
Products (names, descriptions, SKUs, pricing, stock)	Joomla article (description) + J2Commerce product (price/SKU/stock)
Product images (main, thumbnail, tiny)	Copied into images/j2commerce/products/ with all size variants
Product options and option values	J2Commerce product options and option values
Product discounts and special prices	J2Commerce product price rules
Product downloads and attachments	J2Commerce product files
Tax classes and tax rates	J2Commerce tax profiles and tax rates
Tax rules and geozones	J2Commerce tax rules and geozone rules
Customer addresses	J2Commerce customer address records
Coupons	J2Commerce coupons
Vouchers	J2Commerce vouchers
Orders, order items, order options	J2Commerce orders and order line items
Order downloads	J2Commerce order download records
Currencies, countries, zones	J2Commerce lookup tables
Order statuses, lengths, weights	J2Commerce lookup tables
Product reviews (if App Reviews installed)	J2Commerce App Reviews records

What is not migrated (current version)

The following EShop features do not have a direct equivalent in J2Commerce and are not migrated:

• Product option variants (fan-out) — EShop option combinations are recorded and counted, but the full variant fan-out into individual J2Commerce variant rows is not yet automated. The adapter reports how many products are affected. See the Roadmap section for details.
• Customer groups — EShop uses a customer group model that does not map directly to J2Commerce.
• Catalog discounts — Use J2Commerce coupons or special prices as an alternative.
• Product labels — J2Commerce has no equivalent label system.
• Postcode-range geozone rules — J2Commerce only supports country/zone-based geozone rules.
• Product Q&A records — J2Commerce has no built-in Q&A feature.
• Wishlists — Requires the separate J2Commerce Wishlist app.
• Quote/RFQ records — J2Commerce has no quote system.
• Secondary-language product records — Only the default EShop language is migrated.

Before You Begin

Complete these steps before you click a single button in the Migrator.

1. Back up your entire site and database. This is non-negotiable. Use Akeeba Backup, your hosting control panel, or any reliable backup tool. The migration writes data to J2Commerce tables but your EShop data is never modified — a backup still gives you a safe rollback point.

2. Confirm J2Commerce is installed. Go to Components -> J2Commerce and verify it opens without errors.

3. Confirm the J2Commerce Migrator is installed. Go to Components -> J2Commerce Migrator and verify the Dashboard loads.

4. Confirm the EShop adapter is enabled. Go to System -> Manage -> Plugins, search for eshop, and confirm the adapter shows a green checkmark.

5. Confirm your EShop tables are still present. The adapter reads from eshop_* tables in your database. If you have already uninstalled EShop, you cannot use this adapter unless the tables were preserved separately.

6. Run on staging first. Set up a staging copy of your site, run the full migration there, and verify the results before touching your live store.

Step-by-Step Migration Walkthrough

Step 1: Open the Sync Tools

In your Joomla admin, go to Components -> J2Commerce Migrator.

On the Dashboard you will see a card for EShop showing the detected status (Ready to migrate, Installed but disabled, or Not installed).

Click Start Migration on the EShop card, or click Tools in the Migrator toolbar.

Step 2: Sync Categories

Click the Sync Categories button.

The migrator reads your EShop category tree and creates matching Joomla content categories. A progress indicator shows the operation is running. Wait for the confirmation message — Categories synced successfully — before continuing.

info

Categories must be synced before products. The product sync links each product to its category, so the category records need to exist first.

Step 3: Sync Manufacturers

Click the Sync Manufacturers button and wait for the done confirmation.

Each EShop manufacturer becomes a J2Commerce manufacturer record. The adapter also creates a linked Joomla article for the manufacturer description and an address row for the manufacturer's contact details.

Step 4: Sync Products

Click the Sync Products button.

This is the main migration step. The migrator processes your product catalog in batches. A progress bar shows the current stage:

Stage label	What is happening
initializing	Setting up the batch run
fetching source	Reading product rows from EShop
syncing categories	Linking products to their categories
creating articles	Creating Joomla articles for product descriptions
creating products	Writing J2Commerce product records
next batch	Moving to the next group of products
done	The sync is complete

If the sync shows done, the product tier is complete. If it stops on next batch without finishing (for example because your server has a short time limit), simply click Sync Products again. The sync is safe to re-run — it picks up where it left off and skips products already written.

Step 5: Post-Sync Passes

After Sync Products completes, the migrator automatically triggers four post-sync operations in sequence. You can also run each one manually from the Post-Sync Tools section if the automatic trigger was interrupted by a server timeout.

Button	What it does
Migrate Tax Classes	Creates J2Commerce tax profile, tax rate, and tax rule records from your EShop tax classes. Run this before checking that products have the correct tax profile.
Migrate Master Variants	Creates the master variant row for each product. This variant holds the product's main SKU, price, and stock level. Products without this row will appear to have no price or stock in J2Commerce.
Migrate Product Images	Copies your EShop product images from media/com_eshop/products/ into images/j2commerce/products/ and generates thumbnail and tiny variants.
Audit Product Options	Counts how many of your products have EShop option combinations and reports the number. This pass does not write data — it gives you the information you need to plan any manual variant entry.

To trigger a pass manually, scroll to the Post-Sync Tools section on the Tools page and click the appropriate button.

Step 6: Sync Customers

Click the Sync Customers button to migrate customer address records and any voucher or coupon assignments linked to those customers.

Step 7: Sync Orders

Click the Sync Orders button. Customer data must be fully synced before you sync orders, so always complete Step 6 first.

The migrator will warn you if customer data is not ready: Customer data must be fully synced before syncing orders. Please sync customers first.

Step 8: Link Product Articles

Click the Link Product Articles button in the Post-Sync Tools section. This step connects each J2Commerce product to the Joomla article that holds its description. On a large catalog this runs in a paginated loop — wait until the Product articles linked successfully message appears before continuing.

Step 9: Repair Migrated Content (if needed)

If any migrated articles fail to open in the Joomla article editor — showing a stack overflow or infinite recursion error — click the Repair Migrated Content button.

This operation backfills empty JSON columns on migrated articles and rebuilds the Joomla category nested-set tree. It is safe to run at any time and can be re-run without causing duplicate data.

Verifying the Migration

Once the sync steps are complete, carry out these quick checks in the Joomla admin without needing any database access.

Check product count:

1. Go to Components -> J2Commerce -> Catalog -> Products.
2. Confirm that the total number of products shown matches the count you expect from EShop.

Inspect a product:

1. Open any product from the list.
2. Confirm that the SKU, manufacturer, tax profile, and description article are all populated.
3. Open the Images tab and confirm the main image appears.

Check an article:

1. Go to Content -> Articles.
2. Search for a product name you know from EShop.
3. Open the article and confirm it loads without errors and the description text is correct.

Check the storefront:

1. Visit a product page on your site.
2. Confirm the product image loads and the price displays correctly.

Troubleshooting

Sync Products only migrates part of the catalog

Cause: Your server has a short PHP execution time limit, so the batch job was cut off before finishing all products.

Solution: Click Sync Products again. The sync is designed to be re-run — it records which products it has already written and picks up from where it left off. Repeat until the stage label shows done.

Articles fail to open with a stack overflow error

Cause: Migrated articles have empty JSON columns that Joomla's article editor cannot handle.

Solution: Click the Repair Migrated Content button in the Post-Sync Tools section. The repair operation backfills the missing columns and rebuilds the category tree. After it completes, the affected articles will open normally.

Product images are missing from the J2Commerce product list

Cause: The Migrate Product Images post-pass did not run, or was interrupted.

Solution: Go to the Post-Sync Tools section and click Migrate Product Images manually. Wait for the Product images migrated confirmation.

Images show small thumbnails but the full-size image is missing

Cause: The original image files in media/com_eshop/products/ do not exist or were moved before the migration ran.

Solution: Restore the original EShop product image files to media/com_eshop/products/ and click Migrate Product Images again. The adapter logs every missing source file to administrator/logs/plg_j2commercemigrator_eshop.php — open that file as plain text to see which images could not be found.

Products with options show no variants

Cause: Automated variant fan-out for EShop option combinations is not yet available in this version of the adapter.

Solution: The Audit Product Options pass reports how many products are affected and how many option combinations exist. Until automated variant migration is available, you will need to create variant rows manually in J2Commerce for those products. See the Roadmap section for the planned timeline.

The EShop card does not appear on the Migrator Dashboard

Cause: The adapter plugin is not enabled.

Solution:

1. Go to System -> Manage -> Plugins and search for eshop.
2. If the J2Commerce Migrator — EShop Adapter plugin appears with a red X, click it to enable.
3. If the plugin does not appear at all, reinstall the adapter zip from System -> Install -> Extensions.

Where to find the migration log

The adapter writes a detailed log to:

administrator/logs/plg_j2commercemigrator_eshop.php

Open this file in any plain-text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, VS Code) to see a timestamped record of every operation, warning, and error. This is the first place to look when something does not migrate as expected.

Resetting and Starting Over

If you want to discard migrated data and start fresh, go to the Reset J2Commerce 6 Migrated Data section on the Tools page and click Reset J2Commerce Data.

danger

This will DELETE all migrated J2Commerce 6 data (orders, products, customers, etc.) and cannot be undone. Make sure you have a backup. Are you sure?

Your original EShop data is not affected. Only the J2Commerce tables that the migration populated are cleared. Your J2Commerce configuration, email templates, and invoice templates are also preserved.

After the reset you can run the sync steps again from the beginning.

Roadmap

EShop product option variants — When an EShop product has options (such as Size and Color), EShop stores all the possible combinations as option value rows. Automatically expanding those combinations into individual J2Commerce variant rows (the fan-out step) is planned for a future adapter release. The Audit Product Options pass reports the count so you know exactly how many products are waiting on this feature.

For the current status and planned timeline, see the EShop variants migration roadmap document included with the adapter.

Glossary

Master variant — Every J2Commerce product must have at least one variant row that holds its main SKU, price, and stock level. The "master variant" is that primary row. Simple products (no size/color options) have just the one master variant.

Tax profile — The J2Commerce name for an EShop "tax class". A tax profile groups tax rates and rules together and is assigned to individual products.

Post-pass — A step that runs after the main table sync to complete work that requires all the basic records to exist first. For example, images cannot be copied until the product records are already in the database.

Article-linked product — In J2Commerce, each product stores its long description in a standard Joomla article. The product and the article are linked together — the product holds price and stock, the article holds the description text. This is why you will see migrated products appear in both Components -> J2Commerce -> Catalog -> Products and Content -> Articles.

Idempotent — A technical term used in migration software meaning "safe to run more than once". All sync steps and post-passes in the EShop adapter are idempotent — re-running them will not create duplicate records.