'Feedify' Your Shop for FREE using page templates

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:28:16 +0000

I've been playing around with creating an app that I've really needed. But I don't have time to do it so I'm hoping we can work on it together. The idea is to take your shop products and repackage them to create feeds for use elsewhere, like Google Base, Amazon, NextTag etc.

I'm hoping this will end up as an "open source" forum thread where you can share your own feed format you've created so we all can benefit.

Basic How To:
1) Make an alternate version of [page] (for example called googlefeed)
2) Create a new page
3) Name whatever you'd like: google-base-product-feed
4) Once the page is created change the Template to googlefeed

Step By Step How To:
- http://forums.shopify.com/categories/2/posts/29008#comment-29549

Collaborators, Thanks:
- Michael Larkin: http://www.pixallent.com
- Caroline Schnapp: http://www.11heavens.com
- Jamie: http://www.charlestoncreative.com

Google Base Product Feed (RSS 2.0) UPDATED Oct. 19 2009

Feed Specs:
- http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=58085

Snippets Used:
- shopdesc: a short description of your shop

Important Notes:
- If you're in the UK, you have to include VAT one way or another, by either putting "(including VAT)" or "(excluding VAT)" in the price field of your products (in Shopify, not the feed) and making the appropriate tax setup in your Google Base Settings.

{% layout none %}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>{{shop.name | escape }} Products</title>
    <description>{% include 'shopdesc' %}</description>
    <link>{{shop.url}}</link>
{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 1000 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}
   <!-- Item #{{ forloop.index }} -->
   <item>
   <title><![CDATA[{{ product.title | strip_html | strip_newlines | escape | replace: 'amp;', 'and' | replace: '&#38;', 'and' | replace: "Ã©", "e" | replace: "Ã ", "a" }}]]></title>
   <g:brand>{{product.vendor | escape }}</g:brand>
   <g:product_type>{{product.type | escape }}</g:product_type>
   <g:id>{{product.id}}</g:id>
   <g:condition>New</g:condition>
   <description><![CDATA[{{ product.description | strip_html | strip_newlines | replace: 'amp;', 'and' | replace: '&#38;', 'and' | replace: "..", ". " | replace: "  ", " " | replace: "â€˜", "&#39;" | replace: "â€™", "&#39;" | replace: "&#8216;", "&#39;" | replace: "&#8217;", "&#39;" | replace: "&#8217;", "&#39;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬â„¢", "&#39;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Å“", "&#39;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ", "&#39;"  | replace: "Ã‚Â´", "&#39;" | replace: "â€œ", "&#34;" | replace: "â€", "&#34;" | replace: "&#8211;", "-" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬â€œ", "-" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬â€", "-" | replace: "â€“", "&mdash;" | replace: "â€”", "&mdash;" | replace: "%", "&#37;" | replace: "Ã‚Â©", "&copy;" | replace: "Ã‚Â®", "&reg;" | replace: "Ã¢â€žÂ¢", "&trade;" | replace: "Ã‚Â£", "&pound;" | replace: "Ã¯Â¿Â", "&#42;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Â¢", "&#42;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Â", "&#39;" | replace: "&#233;", "e" | replace: "Ã©", "e" | replace: "Ã ", "a" | replace: "Ã³", "o" | replace: "Ãª", "e" | replace: "ÃƒËœ", "O" | replace: "&#8482;", "" | replace: "&#174;", "" }}]]></description>
   <g:image_link>{{product.featured_image | product_img_url: 'large'}}</g:image_link>
   <link>{{shop.url}}{{product.url}}</link>
   <g:price>{{product.price | money_without_currency}}</g:price>
   <g:quantity>1</g:quantity>
   <g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>MasterCard</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>AmericanExpress</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>Discover</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_notes>We also except Paypal and Google Checkout</g:payment_notes>
 </item>
{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}
</channel>
</rss>

See it in action:
- http://www.fortunecookiesoap.com/pages/google-base-product-feed

For tab delimited formats like the yahoo product feed, each product must be on only one (1) line. The problem is that if the any product descriptions have line breaks in them that will break the formatting.

Solution!

{{ product.description | strip_newlines | strip_html }}

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:49:14 +0000

Yahoo Product Feed
—feed specs: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/shopsb/shpsb_specs.php

Snippets This Feed Uses:
—yahoocat: map your products to a yahoo category (can extend this to support multiple)

{% layout none %}code    name    description    price    product-url    merchant-site-category    medium    image-url    upc    isbn    brand    manufacturer    manufacturer-part-no    model-no    ean    classification    condition    gender    age-group    age-range    size    nrf-size    color    nrf-color    msrp    in-stock    availability    promo-text    shipping-price    shipping-weight    shipping-surcharge    shipping-class{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 200 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}{% if product.type != 'Sample' %}
{{product.id}}    {{product.title | strip_html | replace: '&#8211;', '' | replace: '&#8212;', '' | replace: '&#8216;', '' | replace: '&#8217;', '' | replace: '&#8220;', '' | replace: '&#8221;', '' | replace: '&#8230;', '' }}    {{ product.description | strip_html | replace: '&#8211;', '' | replace: '&#8212;', '' | replace: '&#8216;', '' | replace: '&#8217;', '' | replace: '&#8220;', '' | replace: '&#8221;', '' | replace: '&#8230;', '' }}    {{ product.price | money_without_currency }}    {{shop.url}}{{product.url}}    {% include 'yahoocat' %}        {{product.featured_image | product_img_url: 'large'}}                {{product.vendor}}                New    New                                    Yes    1    Free shipping for orders over $49                {% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}

See it in action: http://www.fortunecookiesoap.com/pages/yahoo-product-feed

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:36:35 +0000

RSS Feed (2.0)
—feed specs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Snippets This Feed Uses:
—shopdesc: a short description of your shop

{% layout none %}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
    <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="rss.css" ?>
    <rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
    <channel>
        <title>{{ shop.name }}</title>
        <link>{{ shop.url }}</link>
        <description>{% include 'shopdesc' %}</description>
         <image>
            <link>{{ shop.url }}</link>
            <url>{{ shop.url }}/feedlogo.jpg</url>
            <title>{{ shop.name }}</title>
        </image>
        <language>en-us</language>
        <copyright>Copyright {{ "now" | date: "%Y" }} {{ shop.name }}</copyright>
        <atom:link href="{{shop.url}}/pages/rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        {% paginate collections.all-products.products by 200 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}{% if product.type != 'Sample' %}<item>
            <title><![CDATA[{{ product.title | strip_html }}]]></title>
            <guid>{{ shop.url }}{{ product.url }}</guid>
            <description><![CDATA[{% for image in product.images limit: 1 %}<p><img src="{{ image | product_img_url: 'medium' }}" 
            alt="{{ product.title | strip_html }}" /></p>{% endfor %}<p><a href="{{ shop.url }}{{ product.url }}">
            {{ product.title | strip_html }}</a></p>
            <p><strong>{{ product.price_min | money }}{% if product.price_varies %} - 
            {{ product.price_max | money }}{% endif %}</strong></p>
            <p>{{product.description | strip_html | truncatewords: 150}}</p>]]></description>
        </item>
        {% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}
    </channel>
</rss>

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:43:10 +0000

JSON Feed
—feed specs: http://www.json.org

—FYI I wrapped the JSON in a ”.d” property to protect against a particularly nasty XSS vulnerability:
http://haacked.com/archive/2009/06/25/json-hijacking.aspx
(don’t really need to but it’s a good habit for js arrays)

Snippets This Feed Uses:
—none

{% layout none %}{d:[{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 200 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}{% if product.type != 'Sample' %}{{ product | json }}{% unless forloop.last %},{% endunless %}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}]}

Jared Burns commented

Jared Burns — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:54:37 +0000

We will be releasing a completely revamped version of http://www.synctobase.com soon that will address syncing with many product directories in the very near future, and will continually add new directories after the initial relaunch.

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:45:15 +0000

That’s fantastic! I use synctobase already, and I very happily to donate to keep it running. I use these ‘hacks’ to supply feeds to 14 different services. One thing I’d love you to support with synctobase is a way to filter/control what products get synced. It’s an awesome service you have created keep up the good work.

Glad I didn’t waste my time writing a “Feedify” app! :)

Jared Burns commented

Jared Burns — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:50:32 +0000

Awesome!

Your request for product control is actually part of the next release, so I’m glad that will be of help to you. We also will be allowing you to control what product attributes are sent as well.

There are many other features as well, so stay tuned!

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:54:10 +0000

I had planned for my app that users could supply their own feed format and share it with others… crowdsourcing that work would ramp up list of supported directories very quickly (any plans for something like that?)

Jared Burns commented

Jared Burns — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:02:31 +0000

Hadn’t thought of doing it that way primarily because our system has to be able to communicate with the directory service via their API first. So even with a provided feed format, there’s no way for us to validate and sync it yet.

We will be requesting what services you’d like integration for and we’ll handle the feed format on our end. Any in particular you’re looking for?

Make sense?

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:23:08 +0000

Synctobase was created as an automated process that uses the shopify api to distribute product information to a third party via their api. That is totally awesome, and needed – but there are many more services that while they do allow bulk updates they (for whatever reason) are not set up to automate the process in that way. For example Amazon, NextTag, Pronto and Yahoo allow for bulk uploads/changes but you have to manually login and upload them or FTP them to a server they maintain. So while you may need to manually upload it still saves you a lot of work. You can simply open Excel click on Data > Import External Data > New Web Query and navigate to your “feed” for that service and save the file. No cut-n-pasting hundreds of data points into the right columns – no mistakes.

With other services like Shopzilla.com, Become.com or Smarter.com all you need is to supply them with the url of the feed and they will take care of syncing it for you.

I think it’s very useful just to be able to format the data in a shopify store as needed.

It can even be useful for the shop owner… I know for me I use a “tag feed” where I get all the tags for each product so I can dynamically calculate what products to recommend for cross-selling (what products have the most matching tags to the product the customer is currently looking at).

Jared Burns commented

Jared Burns — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:34:42 +0000

With that workflow how do we (basesync) validate a feed when (not if) errors are returned. Simply passing a user defined feed seems like a surefire way for our system to be overwhelmed with rejected feeds, you know?

As we’ve learned over the past years, directory services require very specific formats and are anything from arbitrary. If we don’t supply exactly what they want, they deny it. The majority of our clients would have no idea how to supply a feed anyways.

Perhaps there’s still a way to provide the control you’re seeking, though I think in needs more thought. Would you mind dropping me an email at hello [at] pixallent [com]? Would love to explore your ideas further!

Michael Larkin commented

Michael Larkin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:44:22 +0000

We’re in the process of creating a step-by-step guide to setup the feed in Shopify as described above. I”ll post a link as soon as it’s ready!

Mike B commented

Mike B — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:05:37 +0000

I’m sorry – I was hoping to come here and read a simple tutorial on how create a data feed for Google base. Anyone?

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:35:23 +0000

@Fortune Cookie Soap

Tell me about it! Why is this not working?

{{ product.description | newlines_to_br | strip_html }}

Argh….

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:46:50 +0000

Solution:

{{ product.description | strip_newlines | strip_html }}

Vidali Consulting commented

Vidali Consulting — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:21:50 +0000

Hi all,
I put together this tutorial as I set up the process for a client. There are lots of screenshots along with these instructions at http://vidaliconsulting.com/2009/09/21/how-to-feedify-your-shopify/

Here’s a quick guide to setting it up…

1. In the Shopify admin, go to Assets > Theme Editor. Under the Templates heading, click “Add a new template.”

2. A form will appear that says “Make an alternate version of Blog called alternate.” Change ‘blog’ to ‘page’ and ‘alternate’ to ‘googlefeed’ and click Create template.

3. You will now see an item called “page.googlefeed” listed under Templates. Click on it to edit it, and paste in Fortune Cookie Soap’s code for Google base, replacing all of the existing content for the template. Note that you will want to change the expiration date to 30 days from the present date. (Anything more and Base will give you a feed warning due to Google’s limits on expiration dates.)

4. Save page.googlefeed and close the code window. Click on the Blogs & Pages tab and click ‘Create a new page.’ For the title, type Google Base Product Feed and leave the ‘write your page’ section blank. Click Create page.

5. Once it has saved, click the Edit link, and on the right side under Template, change ‘page’ to ‘page.googlefeed’ and then click Update page.

6. Go back to Assets > Theme Editor, and under Snippets click ‘Add a new snippet’. In the box that appears, type in ‘shopdesc’ (after Make a snippet called…) and click Create snippet.

7. Now that the shopdesc snippet has been created, click on its icon under Snippets to edit. Type in a line or two describing your store, as this is the store description for your feed, and click Save.

8. You also need to make sure that you have a Collection called ‘All Products’ so that your Base feed will have all of your products in the one feed. To make a collection with all of your products, go to the Collections tab and click ‘Create Smart Collection.’ Type ‘All Products’ for the title and under Set your conditions, select ‘Product price’ ‘is greater than’ and type in .10 (for ten cents). If you have another criteria which works better for you, by all means use that. Click Create collection, and the page will refresh with a listing of all of your products A-Z.

9. Now in another browser tab, you should be able to view yoursite.com/pages/google-base-product-feed . Note that Firefox will automatically try and subscribe this page (since it is an RSS feed) to your default blog reader, so I recommend Safari, which will display the feed right in the browser window.

*Note* I removed

{% if product.type != 'Sample' %} and {% endif %}

from the page.googlefeed code because I did not need to differentiate the sample. I also removed the line <g:payment_notes>We also except Paypal and Google Checkout</g:payment_notes> because I do not accept Paypal or Google Checkout either.

Finally, once you have confirmed your feed is working, you can go to http://base.google.com (whiled logged into a Google/Gmail account you want to associate with this feed), click Sign in to Google base, accept the terms of service, and fill out the Account settings, like store name, description, site URL, business address, and contact info.

Once those fields have been completed, you will want to add a New Data Feed. Select your target country, your item type will be ‘Products’ and for the ‘Specify the data feed filename’ put google-base-product-feed without any file extension. Click Register data feed.

On the following page, under ‘Upload schedule’ click Create. Schedule the feed to update daily or weekly, depending on how often you add new or change your existing products. For ‘Url of file’ put the full address of your feed, e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/pages/google-base-product-feed and click Schedule. You will receive an email update when the feed is submitted, with any errors or warnings once it has been completed.

Your odyssey into the world of product feeds should now be over for now! Enjoy your Google Base.

Mike B commented

Mike B — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:52:49 +0000

Great tutorial! Thanks guys!

Vida Homes commented

Vida Homes — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:15:59 +0000

Thanks both Vidali and Fortune Cookie Soap.
The way my site is designed is so that the initial image uploaded is for the select a product page within a category.

It is the second uploaded image for a product that I need to apply to my feed. Can you advise what i need to replace the following text with to ensure it is the second image that appears within my google-base-product-feed.

<g:image_link>{{product.featured_image | product_img_url: ’large’}}</g:image_link>

I also use a lot of <div> code within my item descriptions which has a tendancy to make the decriptions on Google products look odd. Is there any way to resolve this or is this just something that we have to accept?

Many Thanks in advance for your response

Phil Scott
Vida Homes
www.vidahomes.co.uk

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:01:09 +0000

Hi Phil,

Nice website you have…

Can you advise what i need to replace the following text with to ensure it is the second image that appears within my google-base-product-feed

You will use this code then:

<g:image_link>{{product.images[1] | product_img_url: 'large'}}</g:image_link>

I also use a lot of <div> code within my item descriptions which has a tendency to make the descriptions on Google products look odd.

Fortune Cookie Soap’s code strips the HTML so you’ll be fine.

Vida Homes commented

Vida Homes — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:08:11 +0000

Many Thanks for your help!

Its much appreciated

The Dwarf commented

The Dwarf — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:10:15 +0000

Thanks for the help on the Google feed. I seem to be getting more hits through Google products now than I did with base-sync, but I am not sure if that is statistically significant yet…

I was wondering if there are any other locations to syndicate products that will be able to read the Google feed without major modification. I tried to feed a few of them the yahoo and RSS feeds and it didn’t go so well…

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:34:30 +0000

still having big problems regarding this program working.
all been imputed as per above,but google rejects it-nothing uploaded and with errors…
anyone else?

any help?

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:03:21 +0000

I’m having the same program as johnny goggles.

Here’s the latest email from google:

Google Merchant Center data feed file status on “google-base-product-feed”: 0 of 1 items inserted

0 of 1 items inserted
Uploaded at: September 28, 2009 6:00:00 PM EDT
Processed at: September 28, 2009 6:09:46 PM EDT

For more details on the status of your data feed, go to http://www.google.com/merchants/showfeedsummary?fid=1621832

These are the details given at that link:

Feed status summary for google-base-product-feed
0 of 1 items inserted – Processed on Sep 28, 2009 6:09 pm EDT

Detected file format: XML
Feed Level Messages
Error: XML formatting error – Error

Our system encountered an error when processing your data feed.
Learn more

Error: Mismatched XML tag. – Error

Your data feed contains a pair of opening/closing XML tags that don’t match. Examples:
Learn more

Examples:
Item Nr. Line Nr.
20

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Lisa

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:07:08 +0000

I hope I’m posting this code properly …

I followed the tutorials and the notes that followed it, made a few changes to the payment methods, et voila, here’s my page.googlefeed.liquid :

{% layout none %}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0"&gt;
<channel>
    <title>{{shop.name}} Products</title>
    <description>{% include 'shopdesc' %}</description>
    <link>{{shop.url}}</link>
{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 1000 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}{% if product.type != 'Sample' %}
 <item>
   <title><![CDATA[{{product.title | strip_html}}]]></title>
   <g:brand>{{product.vendor}}</g:brand>
   <g:product_type>{{product.type}}</g:product_type>
   <g:id>{{product.id}}</g:id>
   <g:description><![CDATA[{{product.description | strip_html | replace: 'ï¿', '*' | replace: 'â€¢', '*' | replace: "Â©", "&copy;" | replace: "Â£", "&pound;" | replace: "&quot;","'" | replace: "â€", "'" | replace: "&#8221;", "'" | replace: "&#8482;", "" | replace: "&#233;", 'e' | replace: "&#174;", "" | replace: "&#177;", "+-" | replace: "Â®", "&reg;"| replace: "&#8217;","'" | replace: "â„¢", "&trade;" | replace: "â€™", "'" | replace: "â€œ", "'" | replace: "â€˜", "'" | replace: "â€“", "-" | replace: "â€”", "-" | replace: "Ã˜", "O" | replace: "Â´", "'" | truncatewords: 50, ""}}]]></description>
   <g:expiration_date>2008-11-11</g:expiration_date>
   <g:image_link>{{product.featured_image | product_img_url: 'large'}}</g:image_link>
   <link>{{shop.url}}{{product.url}}</link>
   <guid>{{shop.url}}{{product.url}}</guid>
   <g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>MasterCard</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>PayPal</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:price>{{product.price | money_without_currency}}</g:price>
   <g:quantity>1</g:quantity>
 </item>
{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}
</channel>
</rss>

Thanks,
Lisa

Jamie commented

Jamie — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:43:37 +0000

Hey Lisa you’re not :)

Can you edit your post and wrap the code in

< pre >< /pre >

tags? Without the extra spaces I put in there for it to post. That’s the only way anyone will be able to read it/use it.

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:47:26 +0000

doh!

Vidali Consulting commented

Vidali Consulting — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:23:01 +0000

Hey Lisa,

It looks like your ending description tag should be

</g:description>

instead of

... truncatewords: 50, ""}}]]></description>

HTH!

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:24:41 +0000

@The Dwarf what issues were you having with your other feed formats? The RSS feed worked for me, but I was in rush when I put it together it could be I missed something.

http://www.fortunecookiesoap.com/pages/all-products-rss

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:34:04 +0000

Lisa, you shouldn’t need to use g:description – looking at the feed specs they only add the “g” prefix if the tag is not part of a standard RSS format. But Vidali is right you do have a mismatched tag but you need to remove the “g:” prefix from the starting tag not the ending tag:

vs. what you have now:

<g:description>

http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=58085

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:35:30 +0000

For a quick check to see if your RSS feeds is valid:

http://validator.w3.org/feed/

just paste in the address of your feed and click check.
This helpful tool will try to validate your feed as an RSS feed.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

If you see this error you can ignore it:
Missing atom:link with rel=“self”

Google base doesn’t need the atom:link included to work, but here’s some information in case you’re interested.

Explanation

According to the RSS Advisory Board’s Best Practices Profile, identifying a feed’s URL within the feed makes it more portable, self-contained, and easier to cache. For these reasons, a feed should contain an atom:link used for this purpose.

Source: http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/warning/MissingAtomSelfLink.html

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:33:51 +0000

Thanks guys!

Validation only gave me the following error(s), so hopefully the feed will work this time …


This feed does not validate.

    *

      line 1985, column 36: XML parsing error: <unknown>:1985:36: not well-formed (invalid token) [help]

             <g:product_type>Plaques, Stands & Displays</g:product_type>
                                              ^

In addition, interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendation.

    *

      Feeds should not be served with the "text/html" media type [help]

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:05:49 +0000

The “&” will be a problem XML does not like the & character.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:07:43 +0000

The “&” will be a problem

The product type should have been escaped. Weird.

<g:product_type>{{product.type | escape }}</g:product_type>

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:19:40 +0000

Two things glaringly wrong:

<g:product_type>{{ product.type | escape(including VAT)}}</g:product_type>

Fact that you do not provide link to your feed.

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:22:33 +0000

values for <g:payment_accepted>

payment_accepted

Acceptable values are: Cash, Check, Visa, MasterCard, AmericanExpress, Discover, and WireTransfer. You may include as many methods as you accept. For tab-delimited, separate each payment method by a comma. For XML, include each payment method as a separate <payment_accepted> attribute.

XML example:
<g:payment_accepted>Cash</g:payment_accepted>
<g:payment_accepted>Discover</g:payment_accepted>
<g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>

payment_notes

If you are accepting Google Checkout on your website, you may include that information here.

XML example:
<g:payment_notes>Cash only for local orders.</g:payment_notes>

<g:payment_notes>We also except Paypal and Google Checkout</g:payment_notes>

Source: http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78170

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:45:00 +0000

Thanks Fortune Cookie Soap and Caroline!

I tried both versions of the product type code.

I still get this:

Recommendations

This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations.

*Feeds should not be served with the “text/html” media type [help]

Fortune Cookie Soap’s code gave me a valid feed but still html errors:

line 2096, column 61: g:product_type should not contain HTML: &amp; (28 occurrences) [help]

       <g:product_type><![CDATA[Plaques, Stands &amp; Displays]]></g:product_type>
                                                              
line 5195, column 0: Missing atom:link with rel="self" [help]

    </channel>

Caroline’s version, however, solved the &amp problem, just leaving the Missing atom:link with rel=“self” [help] error

Caroline, you rock, grrl!

Lisa

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:21:25 +0000

I spoke too soon … Google is not happy :(

But at least the error is 0 of 279 items, not 0 of 1 item, so that’s progress …

Feed status summary for google-base-product-feed
0 of 279 items inserted - Processed on Sep 29, 2009 3:07 pm EDT

Detected file format: XML
Feed Level Messages
Warning: Missing recommended attribute: weight - Warning

While items missing recommended attributes will process successfully, we recommend including relevant attributes if they are available.


Item Errors - 279 items with errors 279 items affected
271
Missing required attribute: condition (271 errors)

Please make sure you include all required attributes in your data feed. Examples:

Examples:
Item Nr. 	Line Nr.
14 	241
26 	453
83 	1,463
145 	2,550
241 	4,249
29


Missing required attribute: description (29 errors)

Please make sure you include all required attributes in your data feed. Examples:

Examples:
Item Nr. 	Line Nr.
241 	4,249
247 	4,351
248 	4,368
250 	4,402
252 	4,436
8


Invalid encoding (8 errors)

Some of the characters in your data feed seem to be invalid. Please verify all the characters in your feed are valid for your selected encoding. Examples:
Learn more

Examples:
Item Nr. 	Line Nr.
127 	2,247
155 	2,736
186 	3,284
190 	3,356
271 	4,765
Item Warnings - 271 items with warnings 271 items affected
271
Too many attribute values for attribute: id (271 warnings)

I may have a problem with item condition, as some are new and some are not.

nes & lulu commented

nes & lulu — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:28:03 +0000

We would also like to thank all of you for your help. We’re using http://validator.w3.org/feed/ and it validates.

We are only getting the error below:

line 15, column 32: Implausible date: 2009-10-29 (244 occurrences) [help]
   <g:expiration_date>2009-10-29</g:expiration_date>
                                ^
line 4927, column 0: Missing atom:link with rel="self" [help]
</channel>

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:06:14 +0000

@nes & lulu: do you need to include the expiration date? I know there are some rules as to what is considered valid.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/base/thread?tid=193fd25f00c7adb7&hl=en

nes & lulu commented

nes & lulu — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:48:29 +0000

I was just following the tutorial word for word :-) I guess I don’t need it after all.

So what’s the deal with the 2nd error (Missing atom…)

nes & lulu commented

nes & lulu — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:49:56 +0000

I just checked my inbox and I got an email stating “235 of 244 items inserted” so I guess everything works.

Thanks again to everyone who assisted.

The Dwarf commented

The Dwarf — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:08:26 +0000

I am down to just the missing atom error on my feed as well. Thanks all for the help.

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:21:24 +0000

My feed validates just fine.

But Google is stuck on the item condition … I’m still getting 0 items inserted.

The condition attribute is a required attribute for products.

Some of my products are new.

Some of my products are used.

So I don’t want to say that all are new or all are used.

Help ????

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:28:27 +0000

Lisa, do you have a tag in Shopify applied to used items?

You could use something like this:

<g:condition>{% if product.tags contains 'used' %}Used{% else %}New{% endif %}</g:condition>

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:33:07 +0000

The tool is trying to validate your feed as an RSS feed — Google base doesn’t need the atom:link included to work, but here’s some information in case you’re interested.

Message

Missing atom:link with rel=“self”

Explanation

Source: http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/warning/MissingAtomSelfLink.html

PS: Brilliant idea on checking tags for the condition type Caroline :)

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:35:43 +0000

is there a basic version that anyone can use here,because frankly now i’ve given up ,not being as technically gifted as others.
please? :)

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:01:29 +0000

@johnny what errors are you getting? We’ve tried to make the process as simple as it can be, we’ve given you the source code to create a google base feed. My guess is there is a typo some where in your page or your products have information that is not being encoded correctly to create a valid feed. Can you post the errors you are getting from google or a link to the feed url?

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:36:53 +0000

I just wanted to say… kudos to Fortune Cookie Soap. It is that easy to follow your instructions. Provided in the 1st post in this thread. I suppose—and I will only be ever slightly sarcastic here—tutorials like these should come with a disclaimer: don’t try this at home if you’re not computer-savvy. Hire someone. Hire the tutorial’s author, contact your designer, contact a designer.

It’s saddening. It’s like these designers who sell themes for 6 bucks on Theme Forest and have to answer dumb questions and provide free support on top of it. Some french fries with that? The difference here is that Fortune Cookie Soap is not getting paid a dime to share his brains power yet again.

End of rant.

Now I am going to see a movie :-)

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:25:27 +0000

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:50:51 +0000

@Caroline,

Is there another way to specify the condition within Shopify without using tags so it’s less visible to buyers?

I would prefer not to have a tag for item condition, just so the used products don’t stand out so much.

My products don’t really fit into the New or Used categories as much as they do Mint or Not Mint. In either of those cases tho they could be new or used products.

And I’m also curious how Synctobase was able to upload my products … did they just indicate everything as new?

Thanks,
Lisa

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:23:31 +0000

Is there another way to specify the condition within Shopify without using tags so it’s less visible to buyers?
My products don’t really fit into the New or Used categories as much as they do Mint or Not Mint. In either of those cases tho they could be new or used products.

The condition attribute is optional. Don’t set it and it won’t be used. Remove that line from your template:

   <g:condition>New</g:condition>

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:37:30 +0000

@Caroline,

I’ve been trying it without that line.

While the feed validator doesn’t have a problem with missing conditions, it seems that Google does:

http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160606

Lisa

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:39:37 +0000

Ah I see. It’s a required attribute. I thought it was only required for Cars.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:47:03 +0000

@Lisa, to be fair, your products are used, so I would use Used. They may be mint or not-so-mint but they do not qualify as brand new sealed in original box items.

Read this:

Used: The product has been used, worn, or opened. This includes sealed items with blemishes, open box items, or unsealed collectible items for resale.

Speaking of condition…

@Johnny

<g:condition>New_Used</g:condition>

You either pick New, Used or Refurbished, not New_Used.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:49:39 +0000

@Lisa – Can I stick my big nose in :)

Lisa I think for what you are selling I would just put new and call it a day. It’s not like you are selling durable goods here ie. cars, computers, washers/dryers etc. I think the whole point here is to get a user to your site and in your case I don’t think a potential buyer will be turned off by this. You’re not selling junk and most are collector’s pieces unless I am mistaken….

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:51:25 +0000

Ha! Caroline beat me with the same but opposite response. I honestly don’t think it will matter in your specific case either way for reasons I stated already. You are selling collectibles. Your potential customer will already come on board knowing this.

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:55:31 +0000

@Caroline,

Actually, only about half of my products are used.

Many of them are brand new in original box.

So I can’t choose New or Used as a global condition for Google because neither would be true.

Hence the problem.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:56:47 +0000

@Lisa, then your only option I see is the first solution that Caroline posted and use tags to filter.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:00:28 +0000

@Lisa, it’s very easy to skip certain Tags when you output them, Tags you wish to keep for internal use only.

Don’t you have any way already to categorize items that are sealed in their original box <del>vs</del> unsealed collectibles, like product type, collection, or vendor ? Any clue at all?

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:09:35 +0000

@Jamie,

Thanks, I’m thinking the same thing.

Besides, I think I make it pretty clear on my About Us page:

Our products come from many different sources. Many of our items are previously loved and have been consigned to us to sell, generally from long-time collectors who are downsizing. Many of our items are brand new from dealer overstock or store display, while some are brand new and still in their original packaging, only removed for inspection and photos.

@Caroline,

My products are all manufactured by Swarovski and I’ve used their product categories for my navigation and tags.

Very few items were ever sealed, so new vs used would be a better description than sealed vs unsealed. The few sealed items I have, I’ve included that info in the product’s description. Same with items that are not mint, details are given on the product page.

I didn’t realize I could hide certain tags. In that case, yes, that is probably the best solution to this problem. And using tags also gives me an easier way to track items by consignor as well.

I’ll give that a shot …

Thanks!

Lisa

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:57:46 +0000

@lisa..
not sure if this is right for you,but i’m in the same boat as regards to condition on products being different, so i’ve changed mine to:

<g:condition>See Description</g:condition>

seems ok if you have your goods already graded individually on each page.

(i bet this is something completely different now! :S )

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:03:52 +0000

@Johnny that will not work. Read Caroline’s post above.

This is from google:

<g:condition>Format: Text. Supported values are: new, used, and refurbished.

Those are your only choices. “See Description” should not work.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:08:37 +0000

@jamie..not sure why..see here for a link of one i’ve managed to upload..

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:09:17 +0000

I’m just going to stick this here for everyone’s reference.

Google Base Attribute List

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:13:24 +0000

@johnny
Your Link Returns:

Oops…
We didn’t understand that.
You have tried to access a non-existent page.
Google Homepage

You can do see description if you like, but it is not within the parameters set by Google base. you may have some squeak through, but why not just do it as Google instructs in the first place? Like I said what you are trying to use is, according to their specs, an “inappropriate value”

condition
Appropriate values include: new, used, and refurbished.
Format:
Text.
Tab-delimited example:
new
XML example:
<g:condition>new</g:condition>

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:13:29 +0000

Johnny, following your link leads me to this.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:23:12 +0000

ok…but on the page is says..

Details
Price: £ 8.99
Quantity: 1
brand: album cd
product type: cd
condition: See Description
payment notes: We also except Paypal, Google Checkout, UK Banking Cheques and UK Postal Orders

Description
Â£8.99
DOUBLE ALBUM AND DVD PACKAGE IN NEW CONDITION
IN DOUBLE FOLDOUT DIG….

i’ll change it back to “used”…
at the moment,i’m still only on 43 out of 1000,though i still can’t account for the other 600+.
will report with a new error message after if help is at hand.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:36:19 +0000

same errors as all day :(

Encoding problem in attribute: description
Some of the characters in your items seem to be invalid. Please verify that all the characters in your feed are valid for your selected encoding.

Examples:
Item Nr. Line No. Value
49 1,084 Â£1.99 2 TRACK PROMO CD IN EX++ CONDITION IN CARD SLIP SLEEVE 1/FASTER AND FASTER 2/UNKNOWN SEE FAQs SECTION FOR ALL SHIPPING COSTS & PAYMENT METHODS
214 5,019 Â£2.99 3 TRACK PROMO CD IN EX++ CONDITION IN JEWEL CASE 1/WISH I NEVER LOVED YOU 2/DON’T MATTER WHAT YOU SAY 3/ORION SEE FAQs SECTION FOR ALL SHIPPING COSTS & PAYMENT METHODS
472 11,101 Â£1.99 2 TRACK PROMO CD IN EX++ CONDITIONIN CARD SLIP SLEEVE 1/I FEEL BETTER2/THE TWIST SEE FAQs SECTION FOR ALL SHIPPING COSTS & PAYMENT METHODS
686 16,006 Â£1.00 2 TRACK CD IN EX+ CONDITION IN CARD SLIP SLEEVE 1/ORIGIN OF ILLNESS 2/FRAGILE SEE FAQs SECTION FOR ALL SHIPPING COSTS & PAYMENT METHODS
770 17,977 Â£1.00 1 TRACK PROMO CD IN EX++ CONDITION IN PVC SLIP SLEEVE 1/DNA SEE FAQs SECTION FOR ALL SHIPPING COSTS & PAYMENT METHODS
7
Invalid encoding
Some of the characters in your data feed seem to be invalid. Please verify that all the characters in your feed are valid for your selected encoding.
Learn more

Examples:
Item Nr. Line No.
99 2,237
100 2,259
223 5,234
674 15,733
952 22,413

>>>>>>>>

{% layout none }<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8” ?>
<rss xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>{{shop.name | escape }} Products</title>
<description>{ include ‘shopdesc’ }</description>
<link>{{shop.url}}</link>
{ paginate collections.all-products.products by 3000 }{ for product in collections.all-products.products %}
<item>
<title><![CDATA[{{product.title | escape }}]]></title>
<g:brand>{{product.vendor | escape }}</g:brand>
<g:product_type>{{product.type | escape }}</g:product_type>
<g:id>{{product.id}}</g:id>
<g:condition>Used</g:condition>
<description><![CDATA[{{product.description | strip_html | replace: ‘ï¿’, ‘*’ | replace: ‘â€¢’, ‘*’ | replace: “Â©”, “©” | replace: “Â£”, “£” | replace: “"”,“’” | replace: “â€”, “’” | replace: “””, “’” | replace: “™”, "" | replace: “é”, ‘e’ | replace: “®”, "" | replace: “±”, “+-” | replace: “Â®”, “®”| replace: “’”,“’” | replace: “â„¢”, “™” | replace: “â€™”, “’” | replace: “â€œ”, “’” | replace: “â€˜”, “’” | replace: “â€“”, “-” | replace: “â€””, “-” | replace: “Ã˜”, “O” | replace: “Â´”, “’” | truncate: 10000 }}]]></description>
<g:image_link>{{product.featured_image | product_img_url: ’large’}}</g:image_link>
<link>{{shop.url}}{{product.url}}</link>
<g:price>{{product.price | money_without_currency}}</g:price>
<g:quantity>1</g:quantity>
<g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>
<g:payment_accepted>MasterCard</g:payment_accepted>
<g:payment_notes>We also except Paypal, Google Checkout, UK Banking Cheques and UK Postal Orders</g:payment_notes>

</item>

{% endfor }{ endpaginate %}

</channel> </rss>

need to walk away from this for 30 mins…

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:37:01 +0000

expletive deleted

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:45:37 +0000

@Jared @Michael … you couldn’t wait til after the holidays to cancel synctobase? …

Lisa,

They offered the service for free for a very long time.

1. Free
2. Long Time

Would you pay to get this service?

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:48:47 +0000

Twould be nice if they opened the source and someone else could take the ball, but I know it’s business.

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:41:55 +0000

Caroline, if I could afford it, I would hire you to do that and a lot more … but for now I don’t have the budget so I have to figure things out on my own

Jamie commented

Jamie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:54:12 +0000

I don’t think that’s what she was referring too. The point is that we all enjoyed sync to base Pro bono publico for a long time. I never sent them a donation, never really thought about it, and I am sure that was the rule rather than the exception. You never miss someone till there gone :_(

Isn’t that a song? if it is it’s probably a country song and that’s just not my cup’a.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:25:32 +0000

Jamie is correct.

nes & lulu commented

nes & lulu — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:39:44 +0000

So ummm Caroline, how was your movie last night? :-)

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:43:25 +0000

It was very funny! :-) I like the Trailer Park boys…

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:26:26 +0000

so, do i have any solutions to the above ?

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:40:18 +0000

@johnnygoggles,

I’m going to add (hidden) tags for item condition (new or used) and try this code suggested by Caroline

<g:condition>{% if product.tags contains 'used' %}Used{% else %}New{% endif %}</g:condition>

I believe this will solve the problem we are both having.

Fingers crossed …

Lisa

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:47:07 +0000

@lisa,i’ll give that a go,but swap them..

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:25:37 +0000

@ lisa…
google didn’t like that-nothing uploaded :(

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:14:56 +0000

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny…

Look at what you’re using:

<g:condition>{% if product.tags contains 'new' }New{ else }Used{ endif %}</g:condition>

You should be using:

<g:condition>{% if product.tags contains 'new' %}New{% else %}Used{% endif %}</g:condition>

I am surprised you’ve been able to save that Liquid template of yours.

Regarding unacceptable characters, I’m afraid that you need to pull up your sleeves and do a View Source in your browser to look at your feed and the items that are problematic. You’ll be able to determine (sometimes guess) what characters have wronged you, then you will need to add Liquid filters to your template to remove or replace these buggers.

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:50:50 +0000

@Johnny I looked at your feed and you should try removing the “&” character as much as possible, you have it in over 100 of your product titles and most of your product descriptions.

Encoding of the characters & and < are especially problematic in places like RSS 2.0 titles.

It would be better to replace “&” with “and” but, if you really must keep them try using of the hexadecimal character reference to represent &:

&amp_#x26;   (change the _ to a ; I had to change it so you could see the correct formating)

Something like this for your titles (to replace & with and):

<title><![CDATA[{{product.title | escape | replace: 'amp;', 'and' | replace: '&#38;', 'and' }}]]></title>

and something like this for your descriptions (to replace & with and):

<description><![CDATA[{{product.description | strip_html | replace: 'amp;', 'and' | replace: '&#38;', 'and' | replace: 'ï¿', '*' | replace: 'â€¢', '*' | replace: "Â©", "&copy;" | replace: "Â£", "&pound;" | replace: "&quot;","'" | replace: "â€", "'" | replace: "&#8221;", "'" | replace: "&#8482;", "" | replace: "&#233;", 'e' | replace: "&#174;", "" | replace: "&#177;", "+-" | replace: "Â®", "&reg;"| replace: "&#8217;","'" | replace: "â„¢", "&trade;" | replace: "â€™", "'" | replace: "â€œ", "'" | replace: "â€˜", "'" | replace: "â€“", "-" | replace: "â€”", "-" | replace: "Ã˜", "O" | replace: "Â´", "'" | truncate: 10000 }}]]></description>

Disclaimer: I didn’t try any of this code so if there is a typo sorry about that

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:46:04 +0000

@fortune..thanks very much for that…is the general rule not to try using any type of symbol ?
i’m going to change a few in the descriptions now and run a feed again later..

@caroline..jeez lass…i’m giving it my best shot!!! :)
what i know i try to keep in(i am getting on a bit!),what i learn i try to remember.
like i say..“&” goes first and any others that need removing.

thanks again!

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:32:47 +0000

@Johnny most symbols are ok, XML is picky about a few of them & and < are the ones you really have to watch out for.

If you update the feed to remove/change out the symbols you can keep your products the same and the feed will just clean them up for you.

Don’t give up you’ll get it! And we all can learn along the way! I know I’ve learned a lot from this project.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:47:27 +0000

@fortune..cheers!
i’m removing “&” from each listing manually, cause there are other bits i want to alter along the way…bit of a spring clean (in autumn).
results already!
only another 1450 to go! :)

i only started using a computer about 7 years ago (i’m 44 now),so i’m ultra jealous of you ‘uns! to most of a younger age,it was in school or always in your job(i used to be a chef/manager-until a motorbike accident-,so i can show you some tricks in the kitchen sometime!)..i’ve just learnt from bugging people like caroline! ;)

thanks again!

Jamie commented

Jamie — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:54:45 +0000

@johnny

You don’t need to do this manually! You will miss some on accident anyway or add one by accident in the future.

Just add a new “replace” filter look at the previous post:

<description><![CDATA[{{product.description | strip_html | replace: 'amp;', 'and'

This will make it more future proof. :)

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:40:47 +0000

@johnny if you still want to do your spring cleaning on each product you can export all your products from shopify and (after you save a back up just in case) use “find replace” to make your changes. Then upload them back to shopify all at once.

I’ve done this when I wanted to update the tags on lots of products at once (such as changing “Custom” to “Personalized”). It will save you a lot of time.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:57:35 +0000

@fortune..lol,now you don’t want to be confusing me anymore eh..baby steps…just baby steps!

no,to be honest,i’m finding little things that i obviously missed last time,as well as some nasty / lazy abbreviations i don’t think help.so its best i do it this way.

@jamie..as above mate,but relating to your “by accident” comment,it will make me remember next time i add new stock-which is about 120 every 2 weeks.the google feed results in my mail will pick up any that sneak through i suppose.

one thing i’m still noticing,is the feed is only (still)picking up the first 1000 items…will i have to do 2 sections/feeds of 1000 / 1000 etc ?

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:57:14 +0000

Can the product condition be picked up from a collection?

If I create a collection called “New”, for example, would this work to differentiate the product condition for Google?

Instead of this (using tags):

<g:condition>{% if product.tags contains 'used' %}Used{% else %}New{% endif %}</g:condition>

Something like this (using condition):

<g:condition>{% if collections.new.products %}New{% else %}Used{% endif %}</g:condition>

Thanks,
Lisa

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:43:58 +0000

Yeah, collection will work but not with your code.

What your code is doing is:

if the New collection has products in it make all my products ‘new’

The code that you need is:

<g:condition>{% for collection in product.collections %}{% if collection.handle == 'new' %}{% assign is_new = true %}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% if is_new == true %}New{% else %}Used{% endif %}</g:condition>

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:00:25 +0000

Well, I tried … :)

Thanks Caroline!

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:22:26 +0000

nearly there :)-993 out of 1000 up.
still unsure of why i’m only getting 1000 uploaded items when i’ve 1600+ items in stock..is that the maximum google base allows per feed or am i missing something?

the stress is finally waning! :)

Purple Unicorn commented

Purple Unicorn — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:55:20 +0000

@johnny,

I think this might be the problem:

{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 1000 %}

If you change the 1000 to a higher number (maybe 2000, higher than the number of products that you have), that might work to upload all of your products instead of just 1000.

Lisa

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:20:42 +0000

@lisa…its already been changed to 20000 ..must be something else :S

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:39:40 +0000

1000/1000 -no errors!!!! :)

can anyone help with adding the rest of my stock on, or is it a limit as to how many google base allows per feed?

Jamie commented

Jamie — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:41:53 +0000

My guess *only a guess* is that it's not Google limiting this feed but Shopify's software. I would put in a tickket with support. Please report back to this thread when you find anything out.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:36:01 +0000

thanks jamie.

i've done about 12 new feeds over the last few days, but it just stops at 1000. added new stock today and then put a new feed in. its taken the first 1000 in alphabetical order from the "all products" file, so any new stock in A-R are included, pushing out others already included.

thanks again!

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:06:31 +0000

@johnny Do you know for sure all 1600 are showing up in your feed? Could be a limit from shopify that the "page size" can't be more than 1000? I seem to remember something like that.

Try this:

{% paginate collections.all-products.all_products by 2000 %}

instead of using simply ".products" try using ".all_products"

according to the wiki it returns a collection of all products that are associated with this collection.

Source: http://wiki.shopify.com/Collection#collection.all_products

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:51:17 +0000

@fortune...there are only 999 showing in the feed (not 1000 as stated on the data feeds account page.it stops at 999. all my products (1637) are in the "all products" collection on shopify account, on one page.

i've set a new feed to start soon so i'll keep you updated..

cheers!

update...same result as above -no change.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:18:24 +0000

This sounds like a Shopify limit for sure then. I would post something in the bugs area in the support area.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:19:02 +0000

just posted as you suggested jamie..cheers!

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:32:04 +0000

@johnny I know you have the products in the "all products" collection but just to make sure, I was suggesting that you update how you are looping through that collection:

Current Version:

{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 2000 %}

Suggested Change

{% paginate collections.all-products.all_products by 2000 %}

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:51:10 +0000

apologies there fortune, i did change that when i saw your post, hence why i ran another data feed to see if it worked.

sorry for the confusion :)

Dennis Theisen commented

Dennis Theisen — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:07:40 +0000

Sorry guys, I had to break this interesting approach for some of you, but the problem is that Shopify only allows a maximum of 1000 products at a time to be fetched from the database.

So the only way for customers with a lot products to export all of them is to split the feed, by appending

?page=2

to the url. But I guess most (all?) services don't support importing from multiple feeds...

Jamie commented

Jamie — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:43:15 +0000

Hey Dennis,

How will this work? You can't paginate across pages right?

Jamie commented

Jamie — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:47:19 +0000

to the url. But I guess most (all?) services don't support importing from multiple feeds...

Yahoo pipes to the rescue?

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:59:36 +0000

just got in a noticed the reply from dennis..

is there a solution to this, by splitting my stock into 2 sections..

eg: A-M N-Z ?

or price eg: under than 3.00 ,over 3.00 ?

Inspira Digital commented

Inspira Digital — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:16:06 +0000

Hi guys this ones driving me nuts so really need some help

I have implemented feeds for 2 other stores easily however this one jsut wont work

Feed address http://www.discountsportonline.co.uk/pages/google-base-product-feed-2

{% layout none %}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0"&gt;
<channel>
    <title>{{shop.name | escape }} Products</title>
    <description>{% include 'shopdesc' %}</description>
    <link>{{shop.url}}</link>
{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 2000 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}
 <item>
   <title><![CDATA[{{product.title | escape }}]]></title>
   <g:brand>{{product.vendor | escape }}</g:brand>
   <g:product_type>{{product.type | escape }}</g:product_type>
   <g:id>{{product.id}}</g:id>
   <g:condition>New</g:condition>
   <description><![CDATA[{{product.description | strip_html | replace: 'ï¿', '*' | replace: 'â€¢', '*' | replace: "Â©", "&copy;" | replace: "Â£", "&pound;" | replace: "&quot;","'" | replace: "â€", "'" | replace: "&#8221;", "'" | replace: "&#8482;", "" | replace: "&#233;", 'e' | replace: "&#174;", "" | replace: "&#177;", "+-" | replace: "Â®", "&reg;"| replace: "&#8217;","'" | replace: "â„¢", "&trade;" | replace: "â€™", "'" | replace: "â€œ", "'" | replace: "â€˜", "'" | replace: "â€“", "-" | replace: "â€”", "-" | replace: "Ã˜", "O" | replace: "Â´", "'" | truncatewords: 50, ""}}]]></description>
   <g:image_link>{{product.featured_image | product_img_url: 'large'}}</g:image_link>
   <link>{{shop.url}}{{product.url}}</link>
   <g:price>{{product.price | money_without_currency}}</g:price>
   <g:quantity>1</g:quantity>
 </item>
{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}
</channel>
</rss>

I have tried it with a new google base account and also this is the same code im using in the other 2 stores.

Google base keeps returning the error "no items inserted"

Any suggestions or help with this will be greatly recieved

Cheers

Mike

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:46:18 +0000

I am surprised the other feeds would work with this, you may want to look at them again.

You have no closing ">" on your second line, instead you have the entity (>) for it. looks like a borked copy/paste job to me.

HTH!

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:00:23 +0000

@Inspira you have an & in the feed

<description>At Discount Sports Online the home of discount sports equipment & sportswear. We have a passion for all sports, Football, Cricket, Rugby, Athletics, Tennis to name but a few.</description>

you should update your feed to remove them for you like this:

<description><![CDATA[{{product.description | strip_html | replace: 'amp;', 'and' | replace: '&#38;', 'and' |    ... etc ...

Inspira Digital commented

Inspira Digital — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:15:20 +0000

@Jamie yup thats a silly paste error

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:01:02 +0000

@Jamie cool idea using yahoo pipes, did it work? Seems like it should...

@Dennis is this syntax right? I tried adding page=2 to the url but it's blank...

WORKS GET FIRST 1,000 products:
http://www.johnnygogglesmusic.co.uk/pages/google-base-product-feed

No products:
http://www.johnnygogglesmusic.co.uk/pages/google-base-product-feed?page=2

I tried the feed from Johnny because I don't have 1,000+ products to test this solution with :-)

EDIT: Maybe it's because the page size set too high?... Johnny can you set the paging down to 1000 could be that's the issue.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:46:19 +0000

I got nothing on his feed either yesterday using ?page=2.

Too busy to hit the pipes ATM ;)

Was just throwing it out there. I think it should work though....

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:19:46 +0000

I am surprised the paginate tag even as much as works on a 'page' page.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:03:12 +0000

@fortune...thanks for this-just set to 1000 as requested.

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:46:17 +0000

@johnny yep that fixed it I see your products on page 2 now!

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:10:33 +0000

@johnny yep that fixed it I see your products on page 2 now!

Sweet. If I have time I'll look at a pipe for this in the next few days....In the meanwhile if someone wants to beat me to the punch, I am a bit overbooked atm.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:15:42 +0000

@fortune ..you are a superstar..!! :)

so...is there anything i have to do on my side?

also, by christmas, i'll be needed a page 3 ! ;)

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:27:34 +0000

You will have to string these together and join them into one feed. I don't think the big G will take multiple feeds for base. not sure, but don't think so. They will have to be joined somehow and the only way to not have to manually do this without a custom app is with Yahoo pipes.

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:45:57 +0000

@jamie...as you know, i'm uber novice on here, so what you are saying there is a wooosh to me!:)

but..i've now got 2 different feeds going on google base -feed 1 and 2-..the second uploaded with a couple of errors, which have now been corrected, and they are "published and searchable soon".

not sure if thats what you are meaning ?

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:47:51 +0000

SaWeet. Problem solved. Post back when everything goes through. So nice to not have to join them.

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:13:38 +0000

Yeah I think Google will take more than one feed so you should just need to add both pages...

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:02:43 +0000

everything looks ok!

thank you very very much again for your help and patience.

(now on to something else to add ..i hear the groans from caroline in the background! ;) )

Mike Harding commented

Mike Harding — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:56:33 +0000

Hi Guys that pesky & removed from my feed sorted the feed being posted however the feed only seems to contain 1000 items even though the collection contains over 2000 items i set the code to 3000

{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 3000 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}

and re synced to ggoel base still only see 1000 products. I have checked the collection all-products reports more than 2000 products

Any Ideas?

johnny goggles commented

johnny goggles — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:10:55 +0000

@ mike..

as outlined above, the solution is to set it back to 1000 and do the following new feeds on google base:

http://www.yourwebsitename/pages/google-base-product-feed?page=2

http://www.yourwebsitename/pages/google-base-product-feed?page=3

thats what i did and after a bit,all is up there...:)

Mike Harding commented

Mike Harding — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:56:22 +0000

@johnny goggles

Thanks fella not using my eyes there, just another note is any one finding the new merchant centre a little temperamental?

Mike

AdamNeilson commented

AdamNeilson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:06:34 +0000

Anyone understand why I'm getting the following error with my <description>?

Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (35 for 3)

See my feed: http://www.minuihandysitt.com/pages/google-base-product-feed

I don't get it. Thx in advance.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:10:00 +0000

Hey Adam,

Can you post your code? That's the only way anyone will be able to tell you much. Use the last icon in the reply field and paste it in there.

fgsleep commented

fgsleep — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:53:51 +0000

I'm getting the same problem with the description

http://www.comfortsleepwear.com/pages/google-products-feed

{% layout none %}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>{{shop.name | escape }} Products</title>
    <description>{% include 'shopdesc' | escape %}</description>
    <link>{{shop.url}}</link>
{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 1000 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %} <item>
   <title><![CDATA[{{product.title | escape }}]]></title>
   <g:brand>{{product.vendor | escape }}</g:brand>
   <g:product_type>{{product.type | escape }}</g:product_type>
   <g:id>{{product.id}}</g:id>
   <g:condition>New</g:condition>
   <description><![CDATA[{{product.description | strip_html | replace: 'ï¿', '*' | replace: 'â€¢', '*' | replace: "Â©", "©" | replace: "Â£", "£" | replace: ""","'" | replace: "â€", "'" | replace: "”", "'" | replace: "™", "" | replace: "é", 'e' | replace: "®", "" | replace: "±", "+-" | replace: "Â®", "®"| replace: "’","'" | replace: "â„¢", "™" | replace: "â€™", "'" | replace: "â€œ", "'" | replace: "â€˜", "'" | replace: "â€“", "-" | replace: "â€”", "-" | replace: "Ã˜", "O" | replace: "Â´", "'" | truncate: 10000 }}]]></description>
   <g:image_link>{{product.featured_image | product_img_url: 'large'}}</g:image_link>
   <link>{{shop.url}}{{product.url}}</link>
   <g:price>{{product.price | money_without_currency}}</g:price>
   <g:quantity>1</g:quantity>
   <g:weight>{{product.weight| weight_with_unit}}</g:weight>
   <g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>MasterCard</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>AmericanExpress</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_notes>Comfortsleepwear.com is a verified Authorize.Net merchant.</g:payment_notes>
 </item>{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}
</channel>
</rss>

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:17:39 +0000

@AdamNeilson & @fgsleep:

Try copying the liquid template in the first post again for the google feed. I updated that post and I think the new forum styles reformated some stuff wrong and broke it. I just finished cleaning it up and tried it - so try getting a fresh copy and let me know how you do.

I have included it here as well:

{% layout none %}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>{{shop.name | escape }} Products</title>
    <description>{% include 'shopdesc' %}</description>
    <link>{{shop.url}}</link>
{% paginate collections.all-products.products by 1000 %}{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}
 <item>
   <title><![CDATA[{{ product.title | strip_html | strip_newlines | escape | replace: 'amp;', 'and' | replace: '&#38;', 'and' | replace: "Ã©", "e" | replace: "Ã ", "a" }}]]></title>
   <g:brand>{{product.vendor | escape }}</g:brand>
   <g:product_type>{{product.type | escape }}</g:product_type>
   <g:id>{{product.id}}</g:id>
   <g:condition>New</g:condition>
   <description><![CDATA[{{ product.description | strip_html | strip_newlines | replace: 'amp;', 'and' | replace: '&#38;', 'and' | replace: "..", ". " | replace: "  ", " " | replace: "â€˜", "&#39;" | replace: "â€™", "&#39;" | replace: "&#8216;", "&#39;" | replace: "&#8217;", "&#39;" | replace: "&#8217;", "&#39;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬â„¢", "&#39;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Å“", "&#39;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ", "&#39;"  | replace: "Ã‚Â´", "&#39;" | replace: "â€œ", "&#34;" | replace: "â€", "&#34;" | replace: "&#8211;", "-" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬â€œ", "-" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬â€", "-" | replace: "â€“", "&mdash;" | replace: "â€”", "&mdash;" | replace: "%", "&#37;" | replace: "Ã‚Â©", "&copy;" | replace: "Ã‚Â®", "&reg;" | replace: "Ã¢â€žÂ¢", "&trade;" | replace: "Ã‚Â£", "&pound;" | replace: "Ã¯Â¿Â", "&#42;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Â¢", "&#42;" | replace: "Ã¢â‚¬Â", "&#39;" | replace: "&#233;", "e" | replace: "Ã©", "e" | replace: "Ã ", "a" | replace: "Ã³", "o" | replace: "Ãª", "e" | replace: "ÃƒËœ", "O" | replace: "&#8482;", "" | replace: "&#174;", "" }}]]></description>
   <g:image_link>{{product.featured_image | product_img_url: 'large'}}</g:image_link>
   <link>{{shop.url}}{{product.url}}</link>
   <g:price>{{product.price | money_without_currency}}</g:price>
   <g:quantity>1</g:quantity>
   <g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>MasterCard</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>AmericanExpress</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_accepted>Discover</g:payment_accepted>
   <g:payment_notes>We also except Paypal and Google Checkout</g:payment_notes>
 </item>
{% endfor %}{% endpaginate %}
</channel>
</rss>

fgsleep commented

fgsleep — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:24:06 +0000

The forums are acting buggy as hell

fgsleep commented

fgsleep — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:49:46 +0000

It works!

I did add a statement to replace & with and for the product.title. I'd also love to get the weight in there, but it just returns 0 (I assume it's because I have variants?).

It validates (some warnings) so lets see if google likes it. I think they're sick of reprocessing my "file" so I'll let you know when their system gets around to it.

UPDATE

ok google didn't like it.

Some of the characters in your data feed seem to be invalid. Please verify all the characters in your feed are valid for your selected encoding.

Item Nr. Line Nr.

1 13

2 31

3 49

5 85

10 175

http://www.comfortsleepwear.com/pages/google-products-feed

is the the 's?

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:21:13 +0000

I think it's the &: "Available in size 2X & 3X"

&and;

the quotes should be fine...

rawsterne commented

rawsterne — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:43:44 +0000

Here's a quick tip that might save you some time when hunting for encoding errors.

Google base gives pretty useless error messages with just an item and line number.

It's easy to temporarily add item numbers to your feed to help find the errors.

Just edit your page.googlefeed template and replace this...

{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}
 <item>

with this...

{% for product in collections.all-products.products %}
 <item {{forloop.index}}>

Then view your feed in Firefox. View source and you'll see the item numbers in your feed.

Don't forget to remove the code once you've identified the errors.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:28:38 +0000

Don't forget to remove the code once you've identified the errors.

You can also use an XML comment and leave it in.

<!-- Item no {{ forloop.index }} -->

Thanks, Rawsterne!

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:27:26 +0000

nice ideas you two, I updated the sample feed to include item # comments

Jamie commented

Jamie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:13:07 +0000

I wanted to update this thread. Looks like this can now be handled in the back of Shopify:

http://blog.jadedpixel.com/2009/11/5/promote-your-products-with-google-base-and-shopzilla-integration

Fortune Cookie Soap commented

Fortune Cookie Soap — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:26:09 +0000

Very cool! I'm going to opt into that for sure... I guess I'll have to keep using this technique for promoting products in other marketing venues like NextTag, Amazon, Yahoo etc (until Shopify includes more services?)

Jamie commented

Jamie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:03:02 +0000

Justin, Do you have a formula for Amazon and Yahoo?