Google Base Feeder Support Thread [OLD]

[nehoward64]

I'm getting the same error.... it says the error is in line 14 column 87.

This is the line in question.....

<link>http://www.howardsfpi.com/hfpistore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=596</link>

I've counted it out on mine as well as others who have posted the same error messages and the error always points to the equal sign in the 'product_id' section(in my case it's product_id=596).

If I remove that product listing from the file and run it again, I get the same error on the next product, again, pointing to the equal sign in the 'product_id' field.

I believe the real issue is in the & symbol.... Has google changed something to not like the & symbol in files? I'm not an expert at this but this is what it seems like.

Any thoughts?

OK wise ones.... My suspicions were correct. After several hours of pouring through code books I haven't dealt with in about 15 years, and reading through several hundred messages in this forum, I have discovered that the '&' is the problem in the <link> line of the file. After changing all occurrences of it to '&amp;' with notepad++ and manually uploading it, google liked my file and listed all of the products.

The question is, does anyone know how to either make the base feeder do this automatically when the file is generated, OR, some automatic way of doing this so the base feeder will FTP the file without me having to manually change all the ampersands and manually uploading the file? Although I used to write communications software for UNIX 20 years ago, I'm a bit out of touch and haven't dug into the code(or had the time to) to figure this out.

Any input would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance(only because I know some smart person probably already has the answer )

[xcergy]

OK wise ones.... My suspicions were correct. After several hours of pouring through code books I haven't dealt with in about 15 years, and reading through several hundred messages in this forum, I have discovered that the '&' is the problem in the <link> line of the file. After changing all occurrences of it to '&amp;' with notepad++ and manually uploading it, google liked my file and listed all of the products.

The question is, does anyone know how to either make the base feeder do this automatically when the file is generated, OR, some automatic way of doing this so the base feeder will FTP the file without me having to manually change all the ampersands and manually uploading the file? Although I used to write communications software for UNIX 20 years ago, I'm a bit out of touch and haven't dug into the code(or had the time to) to figure this out.

Any input would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance(only because I know some smart person probably already has the answer )

Can't help you .. but I did go through my file and did a find/replace.

Bottom line, that was not my problem. I re-did the feed and got a mis-match error
Line 14 col 69
<link>http://xcergy.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=187&language=en&currency=USD</link>

The offender is product_id=1878

So Google does not like an equal sign?

What next? I'm lost.

[nehoward64]

Can't help you .. but I did go through my file and did a find/replace.

Bottom line, that was not my problem. I re-did the feed and got a mis-match error
Line 14 col 69
<link>http://xcergy.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=187&language=en&currency=USD</link>

The offender is product_id=1878

So Google does not like an equal sign?

What next? I'm lost.

Google liked the equal signs in my file, in my case it was the ampersand(&)...

Did you change them all?

main_page=product_info&amp;products_id=187&amp;language=en&amp;currency=USD

Also, you may want to try changing the (encoding="UTF-8") to (encoding="UTF-16") at the very top of the file. I had also done this per the suggestion of a previous message in this feed but am not sure what the significance is.

I'm thinking that if google didnt like the equal sign it would have choked at the (main_page=product_info) instead of at the product number. I dunno, but following these changes mine worked fine. Maybe someone else has a better explanation???

[xcergy]

Google liked the equal signs in my file, in my case it was the ampersand(&)...

Did you change them all?

main_page=product_info&amp;products_id=187&amp;language=en&amp;currency=USD

Also, you may want to try changing the (encoding="UTF-8") to (encoding="UTF-16") at the very top of the file. I had also done this per the suggestion of a previous message in this feed but am not sure what the significance is.

I'm thinking that if google didnt like the equal sign it would have choked at the (main_page=product_info) instead of at the product number. I dunno, but following these changes mine worked fine. Maybe someone else has a better explanation???

The error code (line 14 col 69) points directly to the '=' sign

Yes, I tried the '&amp;' and also re-verified xcergy.com as opposed to www.xcergy.com on the Google webmaster page.

The error remains the same.

Where in Google does it state that UTF-16 is required?

[davewest]

Also, you may want to try changing the (encoding="UTF-8") to (encoding="UTF-16") at the very top of the file. I had also done this per the suggestion of a previous message in this feed but am not sure what the significance is.

Maybe someone else has a better explanation???

It all depends on what charter coding you use when creating your products. If you do your product description in word then copy/paste, or type within your cart, or use a csv file from a vendor.... you may end up with maxed set of charter codes... Like this " is not the same as ˝ which converts to something like this  when creating the feed.

Not so sure it's a Google thing as a XML, RSS2 strict coding requirement, but you can ether go through all your type and make sure it's all in one charter coding, and charters such as & " , >< if used in a description or title, their HTML coding is used. ex.. &amp; for &, such coding when read out-of-place will cause errors in a reader.

Or play with the google_base_xml_sanitizer in \includes\classes\google_base.php and try some of the changes discussed in this thread. I did.... still not having any problems with Google and my feed looks good in a reader. I restricted to 20 products as I edited the class file until it look good in my rss reader, then I uploaded the short feed to Google and it passed, then the full feed. I have over 5000 products listed without any errors from Google.

Lots of good info on the net for sanitizing XML.

[xcergy]

It all depends on what charter coding you use when creating your products. If you do your product description in word then copy/paste, or type within your cart, or use a csv file from a vendor.... you may end up with maxed set of charter codes... Like this " is not the same as ˝ which converts to something like this  when creating the feed.

Not so sure it's a Google thing as a XML, RSS2 strict coding requirement, but you can ether go through all your type and make sure it's all in one charter coding, and charters such as & " , >< if used in a description or title, their HTML coding is used. ex.. &amp; for &, such coding when read out-of-place will cause errors in a reader.

Or play with the google_base_xml_sanitizer in \includes\classes\google_base.php and try some of the changes discussed in this thread. I did.... still not having any problems with Google and my feed looks good in a reader. I restricted to 20 products as I edited the class file until it look good in my rss reader, then I uploaded the short feed to Google and it passed, then the full feed. I have over 5000 products listed without any errors from Google.

Lots of good info on the net for sanitizing XML.

Food for thought. Thanks for posting. I copy/paste HTML code from Front Page, or type it in the cart.
That said, my errors are all in the link tag, and that code is generated totally by Zen.

[xcergy]

Numinix now has an updated version 1.8.2

I uploaded that to my cart, yet still have the problem of '&' characters in the link tags.

At least I was able to find/replace these instances using php editor and manually upload to google (YEA!!!)

But this does not solve the problem when the feed is generated.

If the sanitizer is the problem, what code should I change?