Legacy Product Feed Specification

If you have any questions about your product catalog feed or any custom requirements, submit a support ticket using the Monetate Technical Support portal (support.monetate.com).

The legacy product catalog specification supports three file format types: XML, CSV, and TSV.

product_id, product_name, product_description, brand_name, category_name
"33435", """Elegant"" Lounge Chair", "Chair with lumbar", "MoneChair","Chairs"

Fields

This table contains the required and optional fields for a product feed file.

Monetate has no predetermined idea of what categories are meaningful for your products or business and does not restrict your categories in any way.

Product ID

Header: product_id

Required: Yes

Specifications:

• Must match what Monetate collects on product detail and search pages
• Typically not a SKU but a higher-level identifier that identifies groups of products before further refinement based on size or color
• Maximum length of 32 characters
• Only alphanumeric (a–z, A–Z, or 0–9), forward slash (/), underscore (_), dash (-), and period (.) characters are acceptable

Example: 1135813

Product Name

Header product_name

Required: Yes

Specifications: Name of the product with maximum length of 128 characters

Example: Deluxe Stereo Headphones

Category Name

Header: category_name

Required: Yes

Specifications:

• Used for targeting product categories in experiences
• No predetermined categories set by Monetate, so each category is defined within its own container
• Maximum length of 128 characters per individual category name
• Unlimited number of categories per product
• Multiple names must be separated with a pipe (|) without a space before and after the pipe

Example: Clothing|Pants|Men's Pants

Price

Header: price

Required: Yes

Specifications:

• Current price of the product in decimal format
• For retail or strikethrough price, use alt_price
• No support for pricing beyond active price and alternate price

Example: 33.40

Product URL

Header: url

Required: Yes

Specifications:

• Full URL to the product detail page
• Should include both the scheme and host portions of the URL

Example: http://www.example.com/products/diving_watch.htm

Product Image URL

Header: product_image_url

Required: Yes

Specifications:

• Full URL to a product image
• Should include both the scheme and host portions of the URL

Example: http://www.example.com/images/products/123.jpg

Product Description

Header: product_description

Required: No

Specifications:

• Description of the product with a maximum length of 1024 characters
• Should be plain text only, no HTML

Example: The latest electronics craze--this stereo is all the rage!

Alternate Price

Header: alt_price

Required: No

Specifications:

• An alternate price for display purposes only
• Must be in decimal format

Example: 33.50

Category ID

Header: category_id

Required: No

Specifications:

• Maximum length of 128 characters
• Only alphanumeric (a–z, A–Z, or 0–9) characters are acceptable
• Category ID must be unique per category name

Example: AbZ190430mm89

Availability

Header: availability

Required: No

Specifications:

• Denotes whether an item is in stock or out of stock
• Out-of-stock items are excluded from endcaps
• Acceptable values include In Stock and Out of Stock
• Other values such as Presale may be used but are equivalent to Out of Stock

Example: Out of Stock

Category Names and Category IDs

The way that category_name and category_id work together is as follows:

product_id, category_name, category_id
"AA329", "chair|furniture|wood", "c1|f3|w99"

catalog_category

catalog_product_category

Product IDs and SKU

The way that product_id and sku work together is as follows.

<product> 
  <product_id>xyz888</product_id>
  <categories>
    <category>
      <category_id>f1</category_id>
      <category_id>f3</category_id>
    </category>
  </categories> 
  <skus>
    <sku>1135813</sku>
    <sku>223234</sku>
  </skus>
</product>

product_id_sku

product_category

XML Examples

Single category example

<categories>
  <category>
    <category_id>cid1</category_id>
    <category_name>category 1</category_name>
  </category>
</categories>

Multiple category example

<categories>
  <category>
    <category_id>cid1</category_id>
    <category_name>category 1</category_name>
  </category>
  <category>
    <category_id>cid2</category_id>
    <category_name>category 2</category_name>
  </category>
</categories>

CSV Examples

Here's an example with the minimum required fields:

product_id, product_name, category_name, price, url, product_image_url
"33435", "High Back Lounge Chair", "chair", "299.99", http://www.monetate.com/products/123, "http://www.monetate.com/products/123.png"

Here's an example with both the minimum required fields and the optional fields:

product_id, product_name, product_description, category_name, category_id, price, alt_price, url, product_image_url, availability
"33435", "High Back Lounge Chair", "Durable chair with added lumbar support and cup holder", "chair", "

TSV Examples

Here's an example with the minimum required fields:

Here's an example with both the minimum required fields and the optional fields: