automatic creation of category url-key during product import

Question

I'm trying to import 5000 products into magento 2.1 by CSV file. The file also contains categories for the products and I aim to import categories as well.

During import when categories are being created the url-key assigned to them is blank. So when it goes to the next record and tries to create new categories,

there's the error :"Category "A/B/C/" has not been created. URL key for specified store already exists".

My understanding is that since the import mechanism is unable to create proper url-key based on category name, then a blank entry is put as url-key and the next category to import which also has a blank url-key identifies a duplicate and throws an exception.

Does anyone knows a way to set a default mechanism, to generate url-key based on category name during import process?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I found out the problem was because the category names were in unicode,

and magento can't handle unicode in url-keys.

The regular expression that generates url-keys from the names throws away any unicode character in the name, therefore it would make a blank url-key.