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Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 8:15 am
by mazhar
Google Base feeds provides an option to setup a schedule to read your Google Base feeds instead of uploading them. It is very handy because it frees you from manual upload burden. In order to utilize this facility one must keep their Google Base product feed somewhere public on website. At the moment AbleCommerce allows you to generate feeds under Website/App_Data folder. This is ASP.NET special folder and is not available publicly. It means after generating Google Base feed merchant has to upload this manually. Actually this is discussed in another thread where people were asking for a way to change feed output path from App_Data to somewhere public. I posted a workaround in this thread viewtopic.php?f=42&t=14539

Here in this post I am about to extend Google Base feed generator to be more powerful by allowing automatic feed generation. This means your Google Base feeds will be always up to date without needing you to generate them manually. After installing this mod you will find one GoogleBaseFeed.txt document generated in Website/Feeds folder which will be available publicly. This feed document will be updated every 6 hours. You can then configure your Google Base merchant account to schedule feed update by providing URL to this feed document. This way your feeds will be always up to date without needing you to generate them and secondly you will not be required to upload, Google Base will automatically pick the feed according to your defined schedule.

In order to install the mod, download Website.zip file. Extract and upload the contents of website folder to your store's website root.

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 7:46 pm
by napacabs
This is brilliant, thank you. Would you also have this for sitemap.xml, Yahoo and shopping.com feeds?

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 10:44 am
by euroluxantiques
This is great! Thanks! I can't find where I set up the automatic schedule in Google Base. Where does it hide itself?

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 2:28 pm
by napacabs
Go to http://www.google.com/merchants/bulkuploads In the "Data feeds" tab, in the header look for "Upload schedule" select edit.

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:26 pm
by euroluxantiques
Duh. I'm glad that wasn't a snake! Thanks!

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 5:21 pm
by frankenstein897
Works great with 7.0.7, thank you. This needs to be an option in the next release.

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 2:59 pm
by frankenstein897
I have a question regarding this mod. I have been running it for a while without issues. Now I want to start inputting UPC codes on my products. My understanding with the standard Google Feed is that it looks at the SKU and if it looks like a UPC it puts it in the UPC (Maybe GTIN) field in the Google Feed. Do you know if there is any logic like that in this fmod? Or do I need to go back to the old feed to be able to do this and generate it manually?

Thanks,
Chris

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:30 pm
by napacabs
Hi Chris,

Google recognizes the "gtin" value as the the UPC code, field is populated at the Product Sku field in /Admin/Products/EditProduct.aspx.

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 6:30 pm
by frankenstein897
Weird, mine is empty with this mod.

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 8:03 pm
by napacabs
Has your feed regenerated since you updated sku's? The default setup is every 6 hours.

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:07 pm
by frankenstein897
I will check it again, don't think it has been 6 hours

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 3:26 pm
by frankenstein897
Have you found that this doesn't export the descriptions?

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 4:03 pm
by napacabs
It exports the product summary. In the App_Code/GoogleBaseFeed.cs file, line 163 has "desc = StringHelper.CleanupSpecialChars(product.Summary);"
not sure if changing to "desc = StringHelper.CleanupSpecialChars(product.Description);" will work.

Re: Auto generating Google Base Feed

Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 5:38 am
by mazhar
napacabs wrote:It exports the product summary. In the App_Code/GoogleBaseFeed.cs file, line 163 has "desc = StringHelper.CleanupSpecialChars(product.Summary);"
not sure if changing to "desc = StringHelper.CleanupSpecialChars(product.Description);" will work.
Yes it will work. Following are the description related fields
product.Summary, product.Description, product.ExtendedDescription
We are using product.Summary in default as you can see but if you want description or extended description you can try the other two options.