Google Base Feeder Support Thread [OLD]

The next version...

Good god...thats great news. :)

I will have well over 100,000 products online pretty soon in the new store, I had about 356k in the old one, but have optimized product categories a lot since then..let me know if I can beta test, anything..

numinix:

The next version will include a revamp, AGAIN, of the sanitization. It is important that this function is optimized as it will be the difference of whether or not websites with more than 10,000 products will timeout while populating the feed.

Simply combining the two functions is overkill, but an optimized solution will be included in the next release.

Not sure what that is supposed to mean? It comes down to this (and only stating this in an attempt to help)

1. The previous version of this mod worked and submitted all of our products without error.
2. After upgrade - several of our products were returned by Google Base with errors. The description had not changed - this was caused by the new version of this mod.
3. Something in the code of this new version is causing this mod to submit products with errors where it did not before. This is a bug that should be corrected.
4. The previous poster suggested a code change which corrected the problem and all products are once again submitted without errors.

Hopefully this helps but would be more than glad to provide any additional information requested.

Stuff4Toys:

In item number 2247 it looks like the character it's balking at is

Â

> ```html
No awkward stops and starts—and none of the echoes and distortion

Remove this character and you should be OK
JOhn ><>

when I view the product feed, it adds that character throughout every item. I don't understand, now every item on my website has these characters throughout the product descriptions?

Senseiwalex:

when I view the product feed, it adds that character throughout every item. I don't understand, now every item on my website has these characters throughout the product descriptions?

This new version seems to have a bug.

JLA:

This new version seems to have a bug.

Am I basically screwed at this point? It seems like I'm going to have to go back and fix every item to get rid of these characters.

Here's an example of one of my listings.

http://www.automotivepartssuperstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_51_546&products_id=618&zenid=jc1djlupqb4ar755gggjc2st83

I have a few hundred items, so Im not sure what my act of recourse is. Should I just reload the backup of my products and try to figure out what this bug is?

No, just use the older 1.7.0 for now. Worked fine for me once I re-uploaded it over the 1.7.1.

The module didn't create the weird character in just the feed file. It actually added the strange character all over my ACTUAL website. Is this some sort of major error on the installation?

http://www.automotivepartssuperstore.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_81_344&products_id=409&zenid=5vcv3jdtiafm084uhvq2nilba1

This link is to a product on my live website. The character has been added everywhere in all the descriptions

Help!

Senseiwalex:

This link is to a product on my live website. The character has been added everywhere in all the descriptions

Help!

Are you sure you did not do some other import export stuff with your date, like Easy Populate? I have seen this happen with importing stuff.

Numinix would be the one to confirm but I think it is not possible that Base Feeder writes anything back to your cart.

I don't know the specifics since I'm not doing the actual ftp transfer. I asked my web developer to install the the module. Everything looked good as far as installation into the admin. When I went to create the feedfile it wasn't working. The module said to chmod the directory, which we did and then it worked. It created the feed file, I went to view it in another tab, and it was then that the character was everywhere on the site as well as the feed file.

:(

I'm not aware of anything els being done

I suspect they were there before. Do a db backup and restore an older one and see if it was there. You can restore the newest backup after this test. Do I have to say it? Maybe, DO AT YOUR OWN RISK!

numinix, did you ever find the solution to this? I have bullets all through my descriptions and str_replace doesn't work (as you noted). I tried applying the function html_translate to see if one of these would strip it out:
$value = preg_replace("/¿/", "À", $value);
and I tried to find a hexidecimal entity(like 0xD7FF ??) for the bullet without success.

numinix:

Just two different functions written to make the descriptions look better. Yes you can run sanita on the title as well.

However, I've created an XML version which is complete. I'm currently waiting for Google to process my file before releasing publicly as there is an issue with bullets in the description. If the bullets were created using wingdings, they are very difficult to remove. If anyone has experience with sanitizing symbols such as a bullet (not created using <ul><li>...</li></ul>, but actual symbols cut and paste), please post your sanitization function. A simply $str = str_replace("•", "", $str); doesn't work and actually returns an error.

I even tried making the description only display letters, numbers, and spaces. The bullets still remained!

My problem was related to google failing most of my products due to bullets in the descriptions. I ended up reverted to the previous version as mentioned here

It strips all the html from the description. Google strips it anyway so it shouldn't matter. We'll see -- I just resubmitted the feed and am awaiting confirmation.

jmcdog:

numinix, did you ever find the solution to this? I have bullets all through my descriptions and str_replace doesn't work (as you noted). I tried applying the function html_translate to see if one of these would strip it out:
$value = preg_replace("/¿/", "À", $value);
and I tried to find a hexidecimal entity(like 0xD7FF ??) for the bullet without success.

Google did accept all of my products after I reverted to the prev. version. It's not as pretty as before but good enough for today. I just wanted to replace bullets with an asterisk. It also strips out the ampersand html entity (and probably others).

Had the same character issue with 1.7.1a which I upgraded from 1.6.2, using zen 1.3.8.

I downloaded a new version on Numinix' site (1.7.3a) and all products upload without error.

Looks like this version has not been posted on the Zen download section, but it is here:

v1.7.3a

Numinix, thanks for the quick fix... and great mod!:clap:

Hi, I'm trying to list my products on Google Base, and they seem to be approved each time once the file is uploaded to Base.

But, I would really like to include the Products Model information from each product. Is there some adjustment I can make to any of the files included with the feeder program so that it will extract that information too?

I have searched for "model" in this thread and haven't had much luck. If someone can point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it. Or if Numinix can lend a hand that'd be splendid also!

Matt
tuningspeedonline.com

Actually to clarify about my s/w. I have never installed the Base Feeder before so it's a new install. I am using ZC v1.3.8a, and installed google base feeder 1.7.1 . I found on the first post in this thread that MPN was added, but I cannot find that in my Base Feeder Configuration. :(

blakdeth77:

Actually to clarify about my s/w. I have never installed the Base Feeder before so it's a new install. I am using ZC v1.3.8a, and installed google base feeder 1.7.1 . I found on the first post in this thread that MPN was added, but I cannot find that in my Base Feeder Configuration. :(

MPN isn't an option, it is automatically included in the feed as it is a requirement by Google Base. Remember, viewing the feed in a browser is different than viewing the feed in an xml editor as in a browser only elements that are defined will show up. g:mpn is not a standard element, therefore the browser ignored this element.

See line 271 to 273 of v1.7.3a:

                  if ($products->fields['products_model'] != '') {
                    $content["mpn"] = '<g:mpn>' . $google_base->google_base_sanita($products->fields['products_model'], true) . '</g:mpn>';
                  }

Oh crummy. Thank you for clearing that up. I checked the specifics of my items online after your post, and figured out I'm the "bug" in the system. I was wanting to be able to have customers search by the mfr product number and I've been entering product models with the manufacturer name included in that cell. So when I look at the mfr model number on Base, it says "AEM21-XXX" instead of just "21-XXX". In my site there's a space between the mfr name and product model number that I entered in to the cell. And the space is displayed on my product listing. But google scrunches them together when it gets the data feed file.

Well I certainly appreciate you pointing out the issue for me, thank you and have a great day!

feltoneers:

My images are not showing in google base.
I have external images on my site. The image location shows as https://www.mysite.com/www.externalsite.com in the google feed
Is there a place to remove edit image location?

thanks

How did you get your website to show external images?
:shocking:

I posted this in another area and got no answer, so here it is again.

After uploading to Google Base, I can search for a specific item by using very specific search terms. My items show in the results.

However, when I use a little more generic search, none of my products are returned.

For example, searching for "4 aces poker chip $500" will return my product listing, but "4 aces poker chip" does not.

So, what am I doing wrong? Or, what do I need to do to get the products listed correctly?

Thanks.