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Setting up your Product Feed

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Publitas Support
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Using the Product Feed integration to import product details into your account's editor requires an XML or TSV product data feed which is hosted online. 

Before submitting a feed, we highly recommend running through the specifications below to ensure your feed is properly formatted.

 

Supported hosting formats

Publitas imports the product data directly from the external address the feed is hosted on.

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The following feed URL types are supported for linking your feed to Publitas:

  • HTTP, for example: http://hosting.domain.com/feed.tsv
  • HTTPS, for example: https://hosting.domain.com/feed.tsv
  • FTP, for example: ftp://hosting.domain.com/folder/publitas_product_feed.tsv
  • SFTP, for example: sftp://user:password@hosting.domain.com/folder/publitas_product_feed.tsv

Besides the supported protocols, please also consider the following aspect in order to import your feed successfully:

  • No user-agent restrictions should be set.
  • Traffic from the EU should not be blocked.
  • The feed URL does not redirect traffic in any way.
  • When using SFTP, make sure the password only contains URL safe characters (so no reserved characters, like & or *).
  • Push the latest feed to the same location, under the same file name to avoid the feed URL changing after each update.

If required, we can set up an SFTP location for you. For more information, contact support@publitas.com.

UTF-8 Encoding

The content of the feed needs to be UTF-8 encoded. This also means that special characters will have to be converted to their UTF-8 counterpart. For example. the ampersand & needs to be converted to &

Click here to find a list of special characters and their UTF-8 entities.

If you are unsure whether your attributes are fully compatible, it is best practice to enclose them as CDATA: <![CDATA[enter the value here]]>.

XML feed specifications

In the specification below, the supported XML syntax can be found, using only the item attributes that are imported by Publitas. Additional item attributes will be ignored.

<?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[1999.00 EUR]]></g:price>
     <g:sale_price><![CDATA[1499.00 EUR]]></g:sale_price>
     <link><![CDATA[https://www.example.com/product.html]]></link>
     <g:id><![CDATA[A12345]]></g:id>
     <g:availability><![CDATA[in stock/out of stock/preorder]]></g:availability>
     <g:image_link><![CDATA[https://www.example.com/image1.jpg]]></g:image_link>
     <!-- we import maximum 5 additional image links -->
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[https://www.example.com/image2.jpg]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[https://www.example.com/image3.jpg]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[https://www.example.com/image4.jpg]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[https://www.example.com/image5.jpg]]></g:additional_image_link>
     <g:additional_image_link><![CDATA[https://www.example.com/image6.jpg]]></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.

 

TSV feed specifications

This format requires a tab-delimited text file (.tsv or .txt) hosted on an external service according to the following specification.

  • We support the following attributes:
    • id
    • title
    • description
    • price
    • sale price
    • link
    • availability (more info)
    • image link
    • additional image link
  • The first line contains these attributes.
  • All other lines represent the separate products.
  • The attributes and the product details are separated by a tab (avoid using tabs for reasons other than separating the individual values).
  • Use a comma (no space) to combine up to 5 additional images under the single attribute.

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

 

Using HTML to apply styling to descriptions

Using HTML the content of the description attribute can be styled. For this, the following HTML methods are supported:

  • <h1> = Heading 1
  • <h2> = Heading 2
  • <h3> = Heading 3
  • <p> = Paragraph
  • <small> = Smaller text
  • <a> = Hyperlink
  • <ul> = Unordered list (bullets)
  • <li> = List (numerals)
  • <b> = Bold text
  • <em> = Emphasised text (italics)
  • <strong> = Important text (more distinct than bold & italics)
  • <sup> = Superscripted text
  • <sub> = Subscripted text
  • <u> = Some text that is unarticulated % styled differently from normal text (eg. underline, but distinct from a hyperlink)
  • <br> = Single line break (doesn't need styling)
  • image = Add an image: <div><img src="IMAGE_URL" alt="ALT_TITLE" width="###" height="###" /></div>

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

 

Other specifications:

  • The id and title attributes are required elements. If one of the required elements is not present, the product will not be imported. In the Product Feed menu, recent imports are logged. If a selection of products could not be imported the log will show this under Details:
    1110788981945505.u0ljgqB0JUREXh38KMLq_height640.png
  • When creating a product hotspot, the product details are kept in sync with the product feed. This requires the product id for each product to be unique. If multiple products share the same product id, only one of them gets imported into Publitas. See Keeping your products synced with your product feed for more information.
  • To improve the loading speed of the product details we recommend using an image resolution of 1000 x 1000 pixels for the product images, which will produce enough detail for the users to zoom in on.
  • Publitas can import up to 300.000 products from a single feed.
  • HTML cannot be used to style product titles. If HTML is present it will be converted to plaintext:

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  • If you are using Channable as your feed management tool, you can select Publitas as a channel. Click here to learn how you can easily create your product feed through Channable.

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