Automated Google shopping products.txt generation

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   I find myself having to manually generate my products.txt for google shopping every month because products can't be submitted with an expiration date more than 30 days away.

Has anyone had luck creating some kind of cron job to automatically generate this file daily, or something similar?

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Brett Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 22-April-2008 Location: Phoenix, AZ Status: Offline Points: 89	Post Options Post Reply Quote Brett Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Automated Google shopping products.txt generation Posted: 26-February-2011 at 2:40pm
	I find myself having to manually generate my products.txt for google shopping every month because products can't be submitted with an expiration date more than 30 days away. Has anyone had luck creating some kind of cron job to automatically generate this file daily, or something similar?

whizzinpc Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 17-January-2006 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 20	Post Options Post Reply Quote whizzinpc Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 28-February-2011 at 7:38pm
	I have setup an auto ftp to google shopping to update the file stored on my pc on a monthly basis. This way even if the file has not been updated it will upload the latest copy so the products don't expire. It's been working fine so far. Actually, the scheduled ftp uploads to our server and I have google shopping pointing to that url to download it every month. Edited by whizzinpc - 28-February-2011 at 7:43pm

Brett Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 22-April-2008 Location: Phoenix, AZ Status: Offline Points: 89	Post Options Post Reply Quote Brett Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 28-February-2011 at 10:31pm
	I set mine to auto submit to google on a daily basis, but this won't help if the expiration date is set to a time which is in the past. For example, say I generate the file today. I must choose 3/28 as the expiration date otherwise it will be "too far in the future". So, the spreadsheet is auto submitting to google every day until 3/28 at which point I will need to manually re-generate the spreadsheet. Or am I missing something?

avalight Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 21-September-2007 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote avalight Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 01-March-2011 at 4:06pm
	In the Google merchant center, under the datafeeds you can set up an automatic upload, weekly, daily, monthly, directly from your server, so you don't need to worry about forgetting to manually do the upload. In the product.txt itself, don't put in an expiration date either. I create the file in access, btw, separate from the productcart site, because I want more control over the output.
	Curt

whizzinpc Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 17-January-2006 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 20	Post Options Post Reply Quote whizzinpc Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 01-March-2011 at 5:05pm
	I don't put an expiration date in the feed. It auto expires monthly anyway.

avalight Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 21-September-2007 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote avalight Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 01-March-2011 at 6:18pm
	Well, now I am confused. I created a product.txt file and manually uploaded it the first time. Then I set an automatic upload to be done once a month, using the same file located on my root directory. It did the upload once a month, for several months, until I created a new file. But all the while, it just took the old file and did the upload. My understanding was the upload needs to happen once a month, or the product feed stops.
	Curt

ProductCart Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Admin Group ProductCart Team Joined: 01-October-2003 Status: Offline Points: 135	Post Options Post Reply Quote ProductCart Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 01-March-2011 at 7:03pm
	You can do it both ways, but the scheduling feature automates it for you. Please see our documentation. We believe it explains this pretty clearly. See ProductCart WIKI: "Point Google Base to a URL on your Web site to take advantage of the scheduling feature".
	The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart shopping cart software

whizzinpc Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 17-January-2006 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 20	Post Options Post Reply Quote whizzinpc Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 02-March-2011 at 1:42pm
	The file has to be on your server not on local computer. Then you just point Google base to that url... which you need to update when you create a new feed. With this method you can avoid Google dropping your products.

Brett Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 22-April-2008 Location: Phoenix, AZ Status: Offline Points: 89	Post Options Post Reply Quote Brett Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 03-March-2011 at 5:46pm
	Yeah the Products.txt file is on my server. I go to exportFroogle.asp and generate the feed, and google merchant center is set to automatically download it from my server every day. However, don't I need to manually generate the Products.txt file every 30 days to avoid the file expiring? What I'm looking to do is automatically re-generate Products.txt on my webserver daily so it constantly reflects my current products. Google already automatically downloads the file from my website every day, but I don't see how the file is being updated unless I manually go to exportFroogle.asp and re-generate it.

Brett Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 22-April-2008 Location: Phoenix, AZ Status: Offline Points: 89	Post Options Post Reply Quote Brett Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 04-March-2011 at 5:38am
	This modified exportFroogle.asp file can be run without any input to automatically update the Products.txt file. You should be able to set up the configuration variables and schedule a task to run it as often as you want your file to be updated. Put this file in the same folder as your exportFroogle.asp file: exportFroogleAuto.zip *I haven't been able to test running it with a scheduled task yet, but I did run it in my browser and compared the output with the original script output to make sure they were identical.