Google Base Feeder Support Thread [OLD]

[TonyBenedetti]

I forgot to add the details in my above posting -- we are using:
Google Base Feeder V1.6.2
Zen Cart V1.3.7.1
PHP Version 4.4.7 (we will be moving to PHP5 next month)

BTW, I tried to use HTML entity (37) in the product entry but ZC nicely turned it into a percent sign.

[TonyBenedetti]

Some of our product names include a percent sign -- e.g., "100% Kona Coffee (1 Pound Bag)". That percent sign is important to our "branding" ... no blend of beans grown other than on the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii may use the "100% Kona Coffee" appellation.
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...
...

I sharpened my sword, girded my loins and dove into the code -- boy, do I hate (fear?) regular expressions.

In any case, the solution was pretty simple. I just added a percent sign to the list of acceptable characters in line 439 (in the zen_xml_sanitizer function of the googlefroogle.php script). Like so:

[FONT="Courier New"]$str = eregi_replace("[^[:alnum:][:space:].,!()'-_/+=?%]", "", $str);[/FONT]

Hopefully, that simple change won't come back to bite me.

Numinix, assuming that this little mod is benign --- could you sneak the change into the next update of each of your feeders?

[TonyBenedetti]

Running the Feeder from a CRON
FWIW here's a "heads up" ... the Google Base feeder uses three input values but if you literally follow the instructions in the readme file you might get bitten. I couldn't figure out why only the first of the three parameters was being recognized when I tried using cURL to run the googlefroogle.php script.

The readme suggests something like:

0 5 * * * curl -s http://your_http_catalog/googlefroogle.php?feed=yes&upload=yes&type=products

But the URL passed to cURL should be quoted like so:

0 5 * * * curl -s 'http://your_http_catalog/googlefroogle.php?feed=yes&upload=yes&type=products'
... or ...
0 5 * * * curl -s "http://your_http_catalog/googlefroogle.php?feed=yes&upload=yes&type=products"

Quoting the URL worked for me with cURL and I would assume would also work for GET and wget (although I haven't tested with those programs).

This from the cURL FAQ:

4.2 Why do I get problems when I use & or % in the URL?
In general unix shells, the & letter is treated special and when used, it
runs the specified command in the background. To safely send the & as a part
of a URL, you should quote the entire URL by using single (') or double (")
quotes around it.

An example that would invoke a remote CGI that uses &-letters could be:

curl 'http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?text=yes&q=curl'

In Windows, the standard DOS shell treats the %-letter specially and you
need to use TWO %-letters for each single one you want to use in the URL.

Also note that if you want the literal %-letter to be part of the data you
pass in a POST using -d/--data you must encode it as '%25' (which then also
needs the %-letter doubled on Windows machines).

[numinix]

You should contact your host to find out the proper cron job command. That is simply a suggestion.

[birdoasis]

I have the right username and password in the setup but when I attempt to upload from the site it says that upload failed.

I have the ftp set to upload.google.com. Is that correct? It's the only thing I can think of that may be wrong.

Thanks,

JP

[birdoasis]

I'm also getting the following errors.

This attribute is no longer supported. Please use a supported attribute.
shipping:1 This attribute is no longer supported. Please use a supported attribute. - help label:1What file do I change to get rid of those fields?

Thanks,

JP

[numinix]

Both of those attributes were removed in much earlier versions. You may also need to distinguish between the FTP u/p and your Google u/p as described in the readme file.

[jmartrican]

numinix,

First of all I want to thank you for creating this wonderful tool.

I am having a problem. I get 500 Internal Server error when I click on the [HERE] of step 1. I think it calls ./googlefroogle.php. I made sure the file was there and also made sure the ./admin/, ./include/, and ./feed/ files were properly uploaded. I also ran the sql statement, got back no errors.

PHP Version: 4.4.7 (Zend: 1.3.0)
HTTP Server: WebServerX
Zen Cart 1.3.7.1
Database: MySQL 4.1.22-standard

Any ideas what it could be?

thanks a lot.
joe

[brimsjewelry]

I hate to bring this up again but I'm trying to deal with the timeout error with no success. I've read (I think) everything in this thread pertaining to it and have made the fixes suggested: created php.ini and placed in root with the lines max_execution_time = 300
max_input_time = 90
memory_limit = 32M

Increased max execution time in zen cart admin configuration to 300, and tried adding these lines to a blank .htaccess file but get a server 500 error when I do that. I've got about 9,000 items in my store.

ANy thoughts?

Jason

PS: I downloaded the most recent release of this mod and installed it and i'm running ZC 1.3.7

[BlessIsaacola]

I just noticed that there are still some nagging issues across all the feeders (googlebase, msn, yahoo store, etc.)

1. The script fails to take into account configuration settings. For example when I set both language and currency to false, the url generated still includes language and currency when it shouldn't.

2. Also, when language is included in the url it's not corrected formed. Here is an example of a url generated: http://url goes here/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1&language=0&currency=U SD and it should really be http://url goes here/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1&language=en&currency= USD The language=0 works but it's not really the proper way to include language because it creates problems when using mod rewrite to rewrite those url because language=0 is not what's expected, it language=en or language=de, etc.

3. Also, the whole issue of &amp; has not been resolved. When a site already uses xhtml valid code, this mod messes it up because it's picking up the & and rewriting it. Here is an example <MerchantCategory>DVD Videos | Kids &amp;amp; Family</MerchantCategory>. Because our site already formatted the category correctly, the generated just picked the & and rewrote it which is this case is wrong.