a Google Product Search data feed generator
Google Product Search allows online retailers to submit a data feed of their product catalogs. While it's possible to manually create a spreadsheet of product information and upload to Google, this is not a scalable solution for large and/or frequently updated product catalogs. Ideally the feeed should be auto-generated directly from your database, and in turn auto-submitted to Google.
Automatic submission is easy enough -- Google Merchant Center allows you to point to a data feed URL, which Google will check every 24 hours for updates. But what about generating the feed? I couldn't find any good tools that take care of that, so I decided to create one. That is what GOOPS does for you.
- Python (2.4+?)
- SQLAlchemy
- Mako
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Dump the source code in a directory on a *nix server that's accessible on the web.
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Copy
config.py.sampletoconfig.pyand fill in your database info. The current version assumes a MySQL database, though it could be easily modified to work with other DBs (seeconnect.py). -
Fill in table, field and link names with values appropriate to your database*.
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Add a line to your crontab to generate the XML file on a daily basis. For example, to generate every day at 2:00 AM:
00 2 * * * python /path/to/goops/generate_xml.py -
Point Google to the resulting XML feed.
* I assigned variables in an attempt to make the model work across multiple database setups, but in hindsight this was a bit naive. SQL database structures will be diverse enough that the model will probably need significant modification to work with your database. If you have some level of comfort working with SQLAlchemy (or are willing to learn), it may be of value to you -- as example code, if nothing else. Pull requests or input that help make it work with other database layouts would be appreciated.
Goops is BSD licensed. You can do (almost) anything you want with it.