Flat File Delta Feed

You can use the delta feed to update product price, sale price, attribute, and the "recommendable" status multiple times per day.

New products must be added via the full catalog feed: the delta feed doesn’t include full product details (particularly category and attribute information). Adding new products with the delta feed can have unexpected results.

Note: If the delta feed contains a new attribute for a product, the attribute and value will be added. Please ensure that the subsequent daily feed file also has this new attribute for the product(s), otherwise it will be overwritten.

The delta feed contains a single file designed to make it easy to generate from your catalog database via Postgres commands, MySQL, or by standard export functionality provided by your ecommerce platform.

Uploading the Feed

Before scheduling the feed for regular uploading, you should first generate a sample feed. Validate the feed content insuring data accuracy.

Note: The files need to be delivered in UTF-8 encoding without a BOM (byte order mark).

After your team has validated the feed content and structure, send the sample to the Algonomy integration team for processing. Once the test file has successfully processed, the production file should be scheduled for regular upload, typically multiple times per day with the primary Flat File Catalog Feed in the morning. The single compressed file containing the delta file should be sent to the Algonomy FTP server (your integration team will provide FTP credentials).

Feed Files

Feed File

Details

Filename pattern

Delta Feed (compressed)

This is the compressed file that consists of all files listed below. This should be uploaded at least once a day, either as a .zip or .gz archive.

product_delta_sitename_YYYY_MM_DD.zip
or
product_delta_sitename_YYYY_MM_DD.gz

Product Delta Feed

A list and description of every piece of content being changed in this update.

product_delta_sitename_YYYY_MM_DD.txt

Note: Products can be updated using delta feeds, but they cannot be added or removed from the catalog. These operations must be done using the full catalog feed.

File Specifications

See below for the specifications for each file.

The delimiter in the file must be a pipe (|) unless another delimiter is required. If, for some reason, you are not able to use a pipe as delimiter, alert your Algonomy representative who will work with you to accommodate your specific needs.

Product Delta Feed

Filename: product_delta_sitename_YYYY_MM_DD.txt required

Name

Type

Required?

Definition

product_id

ASCII

Yes

Identifier for the product to be used for onsite JavaScript integration as well as in the Omnichannel Personalization Dashboard. Maximum length: 100 characters.

Price

Number

No

The price for a product that is used for generating recommendations, price filters, and displaying in onsite recommendations. The price of the product as a real number. Example: 8.99

sale_price

Number

No

This is the sale price of the product. Only use this if a product is “on sale” (different than regular pricing). Merchandising rules will use this price if it is set in the feed.

  • If the value of sale_price is a valid value ("0" or "12.35" etc.), then the product is converted into cents and then stored in the catalog as that value. The previous value gets overwritten.

  • If the sale price isn’t set, merchandising rules use the list price instead.

  • If some products have sale prices, and others don’t, leave this field blank for products that don’t have a sale price.

  • To remove or reset a sale price, remove any value from this field. This will store the product sale_price as NULL value.

recommendable

BOOLEAN

No

Is a product recommendable? This is often used to mark products that are out of stock as not recommendable. If the product is recommendable, use one of the following values (values are case-insensitive):

Copy 
1, true, on, Y

If the product is not recommendable, use one of the following values (values are case insensitive):

Copy 
0, false, off, N

Note: If your site uses region files, the product will only be recommended if recommendable is set to true in the product full feed file and in_stock is set to true in the product region feed file. If recommendable is set to false, that product will not be recommended no matter what in_stock is set to.

attribute.x

text

No

Used to update any custom attribute provided by the primary flat feed file format. Replace x with your custom attribute name. Example: attribute.saleprice
Max length: 255 characters.

start_date

date

No

Specifies the date that the product became available on the merchant’s site/catalog for purchase

  • Used by New Arrivals strategies, which recommend products that have been made available for purchase in the last few days (see Recommendation Strategies for more detail)

  • Format: YYYY-MM-DD

sale_price_min

number

No

Minimum sale price. Example: 8.99

sale_price_max

number

No

Maximum sale price. Example: 8.99.

list_price_min

number

No

Minimum list price. Example: 8.99.

list_price_max

number

No

Maximum list price. Example: 8.99.

Sample

Copy 
product_id|recommendable|price
16743362|false|19.80
16743363|false|23.30
16743364|true|7.98