FW Real Estate – Documentation

The CSV Import/Export addon lets you bulk-manage property listings by importing and exporting data in CSV format. Use it to load hundreds of properties from a spreadsheet, push bulk price or status updates, migrate from another system, or create a lightweight data snapshot.

Import/Export Panel

Once the addon is active, navigate to FW Real Estate → Properties → Import / Export. The panel displays two cards side by side: the left card handles imports (CSV upload) and the right card handles exports (CSV download).

Exporting Properties

Click Export Data to CSV File. The browser downloads a .csv file with one row per property (published and unpublished). Before exporting, choose your options:

• Language — which language's translated values to use for text fields such as title, description, and address.
• Category — export all categories or a single selected category.

The header row contains one column per field. Multi-value fields (amenities, categories, property types, rooms, etc.) are joined with a semicolon (;) within a single cell. Key columns include property identifiers (id, mls), listing details (property title, price, status), address and GPS fields, physical attributes (bedrooms, bathrooms, lot size, year built), media references (image, youtube video, panorama, pdf), and investment metrics. The exact column set depends on which addons are active — for example, the rooms column only appears when the Rooms addon is enabled.

Importing Properties

Prepare a CSV file with a header row whose column names match the exported field names (case-insensitive, any column order). Columns the plugin does not recognise are silently ignored, so adding your own reference columns is safe.

1. If your CSV references images, upload the image files to the /tmp/import/ directory on the server first. The image column should contain filenames only, not full paths.
2. Upload the CSV using the Import form and set your options (see below).
3. Two progress bars track upload and processing. On completion, a summary reports how many records were inserted, updated, or failed.

Import options:

• Language — target language for translatable fields (title, description, address, etc.).
• Delimiter — comma (,) for standard CSV; semicolon (;) for files saved by macOS or European Excel.

Insert vs. Update

If the id column is present and matches an existing property, that property is updated. If id is absent or unrecognised, a new property is inserted. Re-importing the same file is safe — existing records are updated, not duplicated.

Lookup Values and Geocoding

Fields such as status, categories, amenities, and heating are matched by name against the component's dictionaries. If a value does not exist, it is created automatically. Address geocoding (auto-filling latitude/longitude from address fields) requires the Map View addon to be installed and configured with a valid API key. Without it, the import proceeds but coordinates remain empty.

Image Processing

Images referenced in the image column are copied from /tmp/import/ to the property's gallery folder. Three sizes are generated automatically: full (865 × 577 px), medium (358 × 276 px), and thumbnail (71 × 54 px). Supported formats: JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF.

Rooms Column Format

Each entry in the rooms column uses pipe (|) delimiters: width|depth|dimension_name|room_name|room_description. Multiple rooms are separated by semicolons.

Large Imports

The plugin raises PHP memory and execution limits automatically during processing. Very large imports may still time out on shared hosting — if that occurs, split the CSV into smaller batches.

To install this addon, open the Add-ons panel inside FW Real Estate. See Getting Started → Add-ons for details on free addons, paid addons, and site verification.