Google Base for Amazon Product Ads

[gene]

I have an account for the Amazon Product Ads and it requires Google Base tab delimited txt file option for uploads. Since Shopsite Generates froogle-bulk.xml for Google Base, I cant use this file because Amazon doesnt want an xml file. Is anyone doing something like this? Or do you have any suggestion how I can use a Google base file from shopsite in a tab delimited format?

[Jim]

You could download the products to a tab delimited file from within ShopSite. Just select the fields and put them in the order that Amazon wants and you should be able to get a tab delimited file that Amazon will accept.

[gene]

Thanks Jim. That somehow help. Still need to manually edit the file though.

[BFChris]

One of the required fields is a "link"--ie. the full URL to the page where the product can be found (MoreInfoPage URL). I didn't find this as an option in the Product Download.

Likewise, for the "image," they want a full URL path to an image of the product. Again, none of the selectable fields return this information.

How do you overcome this?

[gene]

Select download fields > Selected Fields only > Filename and More information Graphic

[BFChris]

Filename returns blank for me. I think it only shows up if you specify a specific filename for the more info page. In any case, does it return the full URL or just the filename itself for you?

Ditto for the image...do you get a full path, including domain name, etc?

[Jim]

You are correct that the filename will be blank if you have not specified one. If that is the case shopsite creates the file name with product###.html.

The full url to pages or images will not be downloaded in a download of products or pages. You would need to manually create that data before you submit the feed. This could be done by filling a column with the base url for your store. Then use the syntax for your application (Excel, QuattroPro etc) to combine the contents of the column with the base url and the column with the file name. For images add /media to the base url.

[BFChris]

This makes it a tedious and somewhat manual process, especially if page file names are not assigned.

Any other options, perhaps for converting the Google base XML feed to text format?

I tried just creating a Shopsite template to output the data into a new .txt page (tab-delimited), but ran into 2 issues:

1) Can't figure out how to code a tab into the text document and

2) The automatic Product Record Number anchor tags Shopsite always outputs when it loops through products...break my listing.

[Jim]

I'm not sure how you put a tab in html either but you could create the file as a csv (comma separated value) instead of tab delimited.

For Excel you would put a quote mark, the shopsite field, another quote and a comma and repeat for each field you want to include.

"[-- product.name", "product.price", ... etc

[BFChris]

I considered that and tried it.

It still leaves me with the issue of the record number

Code: Select all

<!--Rec 54 --> <a name="#54"></a>

being auto-inserted and breaking my file.

[Jim]

It shouldn't break the file. Simply put a " at the start of the loop product section and a ", before the first product tag and it will be in a column that you could then delete before you submit the feed.

[loren_d_c]

You could try making the special page a .php file, and before the LOOP Products put <? /* and then at the beginning of the product template put */ ?> and at the end of the product template put <? /* again, and after the END_LOOP Products put a final */ ?>. I haven't tried this myself, but this should put the anchor tags that ShopSite generates at the beginning of each product into PHP, and commented out. So when you view the page through the webserver, the PHP module will parse these out and not display them in the resulting page.

Again, I haven't tested this myself, but I have heard of others doing something similar.

-Loren

[BFChris]

I think I may have figured this out.

It does use the PHP idea and the comment out as suggested, but goes a bit beyond.

Will test tonight.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[BFChris]

I have a working template for this, using a custom product and page template and some PHP scripting.

The good news is that it should be easy to adapt for any feed that requires a tab delimited file.

The bad news is I still have to tweak to deal with unusual characters that people may include in the Shopsite data fields, particularly Product description, as they can break the script.

I hope to deal with that soon, though.

Anyone interested, please contact me.