Feed format

The Optimizely Recommendations engine can process product feeds in the following formats. The most commonly used is the XML in RSS 2.0 format.

• RSS format – Really Simple Syndication, a dialect of extensible markup language (XML).

  This is the preferred format for Optimizely Recommendations.

  An RSS feed is a standardized XML format you can view and manage using an RSS reader. You can import product data in a quick, automated fashion.

  Optimizely Recommendations supports XML feed formats in RSS 2.0 format. When you upload a feed to an Optimizely database, the application first checks to ensure the RSS is valid. See RSS 2.0 feed sample.

• Custom XML feed – Data wrapped in specific tags.

  XML lets you define your own elements for sharing stored structured data.

• Delimited(Tab, CSV, and so on)

  • The file must be delimited. Tabs, commas, or pipes are preferred but the delimiter can be any character not present in the catalog data. If the delimiter has to be part of a value, you should enclose it.

    You must enclose all values in quotes within a unique identifier.

    For example, delimiting with a comma: "X","Y","Z", where Z contains a comma (,) as in the following example.

      "123123","jacket","sample description, but with a comma"
    

  • The first line of the file is the header. It must contain attribute names, separated by delimiters.

  • One item per line. Separate each attribute in each line by a delimiter.

  • See CSV feed example.

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Note

All feeds must be UTF-8 compliant plain text.