Upload and update your feeds
Once you have the data model defined and your feed file is ready, the next step is to launch the indexing process by uploading your first feed file.
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Dive deeper into the Catalog indexing process and discover the inner workings of the process.
Uploading your first feed
There are different procedures to upload your first feed. The most user-friendly way to upload your first feed is using the Instance Management Console (IMC) of the Playboard. However, there are other methods to upload your feed that directly send a request to the Index microservice, such as using the Index API or using queues.
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When you're preparing a multilingual project, you need to index as many feed files as supported languages. To do so, upload or send a request for only one feed file at a time.
The indexing process only starts if the feed file is valid, or rather, if it meets the Index microservice's requirements about format and codification. Feed validation assesses the file format (JSON, XML, or CSV) and its internal codification (for example, non-empty fields are full, the value syntax is correct based on the field's data type), or both, based on the field:
- For mandatory fields, the system tests both the format and the codification.
- For custom fields, the system validates the format only, since the custom fields and properties are ignored.
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For technical specifications about Index API endpoint for starting the indexing process, see Index API.
When the validation is performed within the indexing process, the feed is automatically indexed. In case of an invalid feed, the indexing process is interrupted. In this case, validation results and an error log are returned to help you debug your feed file.
Updating your feed
Each time you need to modify products of your catalog, you need to index a feed file. This also applies to updating only selected values of your catalog that are likely to change frequently, even several times a day, for example, the stock of products in a commerce store.
To update selected values of an already uploaded catalog, you can schedule frequent API requests with updates, or rather, set the automatic indexing of partial feeds. Partial feeds only include indexed fields whose values need modification. Note that to add or delete fields, you need to index full feeds.
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In case of inconsistency between the set of fields already indexed and the one to be indexed, the former is overwritten by the latter.
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Know more about full and partial feeds and the type of feeds that can be indexed in your commerce store in the Discover the feed file types page.