Setting up your Product Feed

To set up your Product Feed, you’ll need to host an XML or TXT file on an external service and submit the URL of that file to Publitas.

Before you submit your Feed, we highly recommend running through the specifications below to ensure your feed is properly formatted.

URL standards compatible with Publitas are:
- HTTP
- HTTPS
- FTP (authentication must be disabled, ie. no required username & password)
- SFTP (credentials required)
If required, we can set up an SFTP location for you. For more information, contact support.

Make sure there are no user-agent restrictions set, traffic from the EU is not blocked and no redirects take place, as our systems require direct access to the product feed file.

Encoding
The product feed file needs to be fully UTF-8 compliant. This means that “&” needs to be converted to “&amp;” and all special characters need to be converted to their UTF-8 counterpart. If you are unsure whether your attributes are fully compatible, it is best practice to wrap them in <![CDATA[enter the value here]]>.

Supporting html formatting from attributes
For the title element we do not allow any html. If html is present it will be converted to plaintext.

For description element we allow the following:

All other HTML is sanitized to avoid conflicts with embed page css or risk breaking the modal window.

I want to use an XML format

In the specification below, we've only mentioned the item attributes that are imported.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0">
  <channel>
    <item>
     <title><![CDATA[Product title]]></title>
     <description><![CDATA[Product description]]></description>
     <g:price><![CDATA[Product original price]]></g:price>
     <g:sale_price><![CDATA[Product discounted price]]></g:sale_price>
     <link><![CDATA[Product link]]></link>
     <g:id><![CDATA[Product ID]]></g:id>
     <g:image_link><![CDATA[URL to image]]></g:image_link>
     <!-- we import maximum 5 additional image links -->
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[URL to image]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[URL to image]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[URL to image]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[URL to image]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[URL to image]]></g:additional_image_link>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Here is a link to a working XML Product Feed

Alternatively, the attributes <g:title>, <g:description> and <g:link> are also supported.

The id and title attributes are required elements. If one of the required elements is not present for a product, that product will not be imported. Once the import has completed you will receive a message: "WARNING: only X of Y products imported."

I want to use a TXT or TSV format

This format requires a tab-delimited text file hosted on an external service according to the following specification:

1. We support the following attributes:

• id (required)
• title (required)
• description
• price
• sale price
• link
• image link
• additional image link

2. The first line must contain table headers for the attributes used, each separated by a tab.
3. From the second line, each line represents a Product. Separate values for each attribute with a tab.
4. Tabs cannot be used in attribute values as that is mistaken for a new-product attribute break

Here is a link to a working TXT Product Feed
How to troubleshoot a TSV feed

Please note:
- Publitas can import up to 300.000 products from a single feed.
- If you are using Channable as your feed management tool, you can select Publitas as a channel. This blog post explains how you can easily create your product feed through Channable.