product feed standards?

Hi Colin,

Unfortunately there are no standards as regards merchant product data - either on the format or the information provided. The closest that you get to "standards" as such are where an affiliate network provides feeds for all its merchants in a standard format, but again the format varies considerably between networks (although there are many similarities).

Cheers,
David.

So with Price Tapestry how can I tell if a particular mechant or affiliate feed is supported? I guess it supports a number of standard formats? Do you have to create your won custom mapping in the cases where support is not present?

Thanks.

Hi Colin,

Price Tapestry uses my Magic Parser script (which is included as part of Price Tapestry) to import products from virtually any product data feed. It can read any XML format, and also supports any text based format (CSV, Tab separated values etc.).

Normally, Magic Parser will automatically detect the format of the feed. Then, on the second feed registration page you simply tell Price Tapestry which fields contain the required information - Product Name, Description, Image URL, Buy URL and Price. You can see this working on the Price Tapestry demo admin site - just click on "Register" alongside any of the feeds:

http://www.webpricecheck.co.uk/admin/
(username: demo, password: demo)

If you want to see if Magic Parser can read a feed that you would like to use with Price Tapestry, you can upload to the Magic Parser demo tool at:

http://www.magicparser.com/demo

If you can browse the products in your feed using the above demo tool then you will have no problem using the feed with Price Tapestry!

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
David.