For arlanix/product-feed 1.0

Glossary

Feed

A file that lists your products for a platform such as Google or Meta, one row per product: its ID, title, price, picture, stock and so on. In the admin, a feed is also the settings that make that file: which products, which fields, where it goes and when.

Type

What platform a feed is for: Google Shopping, Meta Catalog, Tiktok Catalog and so on. The type knows the platform's fields, which of them it requires and which values it accepts. It fills them in for you when you copy its catalog in the Mapping section, and it warns you, above the feed's form, in Run History and in Preview, where a feed strays from them. It never leaves a product out: only the mapping does, see Warning. Generic is a type with no fields of its own, for a file you design yourself.

Channel

Where a feed goes: a File on your store that the platform collects, an upload to an SFTP server, or straight into Google Merchant Center. Set in the General section; its settings are in the Channel section.

Mapping

The table in a feed that says, for every field the platform wants, where the value comes from. One row is one field. See Mapping.

Field

A column of the feed file, named the way the platform names it: id, title, price, image_link.

Attribute

A property of your products in Magento: name, SKU, colour, size, material. A mapping row usually takes its value from one.

Template

A row value that mixes text and attributes, written with curly braces: {name} in {color} gives Linen Tablecloth in Ivory. Chosen as Fixed value or template….

Modifier

A small change made to a value on its way into the feed: cut it to 150 characters, remove HTML, capitalise it. Shown as chips on a mapping row.

Dictionary

A translation table from your store's words to a platform's: Ivory to White, your stock status to in_stock. Made once under Arlanix → Dictionaries and used by any number of feeds.

Store view

One language and currency of your Magento store. A store in English and French has two store views. A feed is made for one store view, and takes its prices, language and links from it.

Customer group

Who Magento thinks the shopper is: NOT LOGGED IN, General, Wholesale. Prices can differ by group. A feed for Google should carry the NOT LOGGED IN price, the one a visitor sees.

Configurable product and variation

A product sold in several sizes or colours is a configurable product in Magento, and each size or colour is a variation, a simple product of its own that shoppers do not see separately. See the sizes and colours recipe.

SKU

The product's code in your catalogue. Feeds use it as the product's ID, which is how Google and Magento talk about the same product.

GTIN

A product's barcode number: EAN in Europe, UPC in America. Google asks for it; products you make yourself have none, and the own brand recipe says so to Google.

Google product category

Google's own list of product kinds, such as Home & Garden > Linens & Bedding > Table Linens > Tablecloths, used by every shopping platform. See Google categories.

Cron

Magento's timer. It runs the store's background work every minute, feeds included. Your developer sets it up with the module; if it stops, feeds stop running on their own.

Generate now

The entry in a feed's Select menu that runs the feed at once instead of waiting for its schedule. The file is ready within a minute or two.

Run History

The record of every run: when it ran, how many products it took, what it left out and why. See Running and checking.

Preview

The button on a feed that shows the row of any product exactly as the feed will send it.

Warning

A note on a feed or on a run that something is not as the feed type expects: a field the platform requires with no mapping rule, a value the platform does not list, a text over its length, an empty field the platform requires. The product still goes to the platform, which has the last word; the warning tells you where to look if it is refused there. A product is left out of a feed only by its mapping: a field marked Required that it has nothing for, or a dictionary that excludes it.

Merchant Center

Google's service where your products are kept for Google Shopping and its ads. A feed is one of its data sources.

SFTP

A secure way to upload a file to another company's server. Some platforms and Google Merchant Center accept feeds this way. See SFTP delivery.

Support bundle

A zip file with the module's log and facts about your installation, to send to support when something is wrong. See Support bundle.