Open Catalog Interface (OCI): Manual for Open Icecat XML and Full Icecat XML

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Icecat xml

This document describes the Icecat XML method of Icecat’s Open Catalog Interface (OCI): a set of standards and file formats used in the Icecat XML repository. In summary, it gives the basics of how to use the Icecat repository or how to publish data to Icecat conforming this OCI.

Other Integration Methods

If you want to integrate product data without frames, conforming your CSS, then use Icecat Live. If you want to have full control over the data, then make use of the XML (read further below), JSON, or CSV download methods. See the full overview of methods and manuals.

Further, check out the Add-On page for popular platforms already integrating Icecat data, which we regularly update.

Are you interested in adding product reviews? Then check out our reviews manual.

Brand owners that look into pushing data into Icecat, please, look into our Push-API or for manual data-entry Icecat’s Free Vendor Central.

Importants Notes about Icecat XML

  1. In case of Open Icecat, please check the Open Icecat sections.
  2. The links and files in the download directories are to be downloaded with scripts (from server to server). If you try to download them via your browser, you may sometimes experience memory problems. This does not mean that on our side the data is not accessible or correctly available. In case you experience any problem, contact us via the contact form.
  3. We show by default a daily index file when you only enter the directory name. This, because it is more efficient for testing and viewing in a browser. To get the complete index file with products for Open Icecat users and all described products for Full Icecat users, include in the path the full file name of the complete index: files.index.xml (in Open Icecat or Full Icecat).
  4. Some brands have a restrictive syndication policy, in which they allow access to certain digital assets or other product data only to authorized resellers. In general, it is therefore good to request authorization from brands with which you have established formal relations via the Icecat website.

After a rip of our general site, an IP address may be temporarily blocked. A rip is not acceptable as it may hurt site performance and can be a copyright infringement.

Advantages of upgrading to Full Icecat

The JSON interface may be accessed by all Icecat Data (XML, CSV or JSON) users, with at least an Open Icecat account. Open Icecat users can access the data of the sponsoring brands. Full Icecat users can access the data of all brands in the Icecat database, and get a free Vendor Central (PIM) service included.

However attractive the free Open Icecat database is, the Full-Icecat database still contains many, many more brands: 10,000s. If you want specific brands to be included into free Open Icecat, please, recommend Icecat to your manufacturer contacts.

Read more about the main advantages of Full Icecat over free Open Icecat and see the Icecat Susbcription Plans.

In case you want to upgrade to Full Icecat, please contact us via the contact form, or click on the “request Full Icecat access” link after the User Login.

Open Icecat Fair Use Policy

We require any user of Open Icecat product data – in a free Open Icecat subscription or as part of the Full Icecat data – to respect the Open Icecat Fair Use Policy.

Explicitly relevant for website development is:

  • to mention explicitly the “Specs Icecat” on all product datasheets, with a link to the Icecat.biz web site
  • to include explicitly an “AS IS” disclaimer, an example of which is here: https://icecat.biz/ssr/en/menu/disclaimer (available in several languages).

International Standards Supported

Apart from XML, Icecat is compliant with an increasing number of international standards. See here a quick overview of such supported standards.

Coverage analysis

To decide to make use of Full Icecat or Open Icecat it may be important to analyze the coverage of your portfolio or the portfolio of your supplier. You can always ask us to give you an overview of the coverage of (stock) portfolio of your suppliers (i.e., distributors) at any given moment. We strive to cover at least 90% of the stock portfolio (stock > 1) of mainstream distributors and work together with partners to monitor this coverage daily.

If you want to analyze coverage, you can do two things:

1) Register and upload your catalog to Icecat via the Login. In the match analysis, you get the match percentages back for Full Icecat and Open Icecat. And you can get a list of unrecognized products. An advantage is that you can also optionally display your offers -using this method- on the Icecat.biz price comparison sites. NOTE: if you follow this method, Icecat also provides you automatically with your private Icecat index.

2) If you do in-depth coverage analyses, please use the following matching file, which is a plain dump of everything in our catalog: https://data.Icecat.biz/prodid/prodid_d.txt.gz (a very large file with all known products in the Icecat database, described and standardized or not in gzipped archive). NOTE: Market presence=Y in the matching file indicates that we notice that the product is currently present in at least one distributor’s catalog. Quality=Icecat means that Icecat editors have standardized the data-sheet. Quality=SUPPLIER means that the data-sheet comes from a manufacturer’s CMS (or a brand editor created a product data-sheet manually via Icecat PIM). The respective data-sheet might be queued for standardization. Quality=NOEDITOR means that our editors did not create a data-sheet yet, nor did we auto-import manufacturer data; so, it is only the raw data as we received it from channel partners.

TIP: discuss with the Icecat team a service level for your portfolio.

1. Icecat XML Repositories

The Full Icecat XML repository is a set of product data files and an index file, which includes all pointers to individual product files and gives some basic information as timestamp updated, content quality level, etc. The Icecat XML repository contains product information for products of all brands, and categories that subscribers want us to support. The current content can be best reviewed on the public Icecat website

The Open Icecat repository is the part of the Icecat XML repository that is sponsored by manufacturers and is provided for free to the channel. Open Icecat is distributed under the Open Content License Agreement. Which brands are included in Open Icecat? The most recent list is here. Open Icecat is also useful during development and testing.

2. Directories

2.1 Access

To obtain access to the repository, you will need a login/password, provided to you by Icecat. If you don’t have these, please register online for free Open Icecat. NOTE: During the registration you need to choose for the Live (JS) or Data (xml, json, csv) version. If you want to make use of XML, make sure that you choose the Open Icecat Data subscription. You can always change this afterwards or create a second subscription for the Live version method. For Full Icecat access, a separate contract is needed. You can request this contract here.

Take care that you provide us with the right IP addresses of your content servers, as the access is secure. You can test the login/password combination by entering it by hand in the BASIC HTTP authorization pop-up screen, which appears automatically when the directory URL is entered. In this case, we need to have added the IP address of your workplace as well to your profile. If you don’t know this IP address, just type in your browser https://www.whatismyip.com/ or https://www.getip.com/ and fill it in the IP addresses field after Login via the Icecat website (enter multiple IPs space separated).

Of course, for professional use, server access needs to be set up. In case of little experience in this field, we advise you to make use of the Live version sor ask us for assistance.

2.2 Individual Product XML (Meta) Requests (real-time)

For smaller catalogs and for testing XML with small data-sets, it may be handy to make use of our realtime interface (URL2XML) for retrieving Product XML from the (Open) Icecat repositories.

The general format of the call is:

Requesting a product XML by Brand and Product code:

https://data.Icecat.biz/xml_s3/xml_server3.cgi?prod_id=<prod_id>;vendor=<vendor_name>;lang=<lang>;output=<output>

or

Requesting a product XML by GTIN (EAN or UPC):

https://data.Icecat.biz/xml_s3/xml_server3.cgi?ean_upc=<EAN or UPC>;lang=<lang>;output=<output>

Where:

prod_id – the manufacturer product code of the requested product, vendor_name – name of the manufacturer of the requested product, ean_upc – the EAN or UPC code to identify a product,

langthe language code (INT – for the international/standardized repository, EN, NL, FR – for local ones),

output – the type of the response. It can be productxml (the product xml file) and metaxml (the index or meta information on the Brand + ProdID/M_Prod_ID or EAN/UPC).

For example, if you need to get an xml file of product ‘WM527 mouse Bluetooth Laser 1600 DPI Right-hand’. Manufactured by DELL, with product number WM527-BK, in English, the call will be:

https://data.Icecat.biz/xml_s3/xml_server3.cgi?prod_id=WM527-BK;vendor=dell;lang=en;output=productxml 

In case you want to retrieve data on the basis of an EAN or UPC code:

https://data.Icecat.biz/xml_s3/xml_server3.cgi?ean_upc=5397063929863;lang=en;output=productxml 

The meta data:

https://data.Icecat.biz/xml_s3/xml_server3.cgi?prod_id=WM527-BK;vendor=dell;lang=en;output=metaxml

XML Server 3 access works via the basic HTTP authorization, also used for other HTTP requests.

TIP 1: Use the Presentation_Value parameter in localized data-sheets for display of a data-sheet, and use the standardized Value parameter for search & compare on standardized values.

TIP 2: LocalValue is a transformation of the international Value according to the local dictionary and the applicable Metric/Imperial value system. Especially, for local applications,we advise to use LocalValue for search & compare functionalities

2.3 Open Icecat (free) directories, for batch processing

Open Icecat users have access to:

https://data.Icecat.biz/export/freexml/<lang> 

for access to the standardized data files (QUALITY=ICECAT). Where <lang> stands for language code

TIP: use the standardized files for searching & comparing.

Please, note, where QUALITY = SUPPLIER only the original product data as imported from a manufacturer’s CMS is available, the respective data-sheet is not yet standardized by our editors. When standardized, the parameter changes to QUALITY = Icecat.

The language-specific product data-files are here:

https://data.Icecat.biz/export/freexml/<lang>/<product_id>.xml 

where <lang> stands for language code and <product_id> stands for Icecat product ID

Please, note that this language-specific content contains the standardized content (same as in INT), which is entered by our editors. Or, if no standardized data is yet available, it contains just the original data (Quality=Supplier) imported from the CMS of a manufacturer or entered manually via the Icecat PIM by the manufacturer.

In general, we follow the ISO 639-1 two-character country codes, except when a code can not be unambiguously tied to a language. So we use for example EN_SG, and EN_IN to identify Singapore English and Indian English respectively

TIP: we advise the language-specific product content (Presentation_Value) purely for the display of product data-sheets, not for search & comparison. For search & comparison, we advise the standardized product content of the Value parameter from the /INT or local language directory. We advise LocalValue for country-specific search & compare applications.

TIP: Open Icecat is also useful for testing purposes before you upgrade to Full Icecat. The technical structures are 100% compatible with those of Full Icecat.

2.4 Full Icecat directories, for batch processing

Full Icecat contains all product data of all 10,000s of brands supported. Often provided with service levels and coverage guarantees. For the Full Icecat subscribers, a separate directory structure is in place:

https://data.Icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>

Where <lang> stands for language code.

Please, note, where QUALITY = SUPPLIER only the original product data as imported from a manufacturer’s PIM is available, the respective data-sheet is not yet standardized by our editors. When standardized, the parameter changes to QUALITY = ICECAT.

The language-specific product data-files are here:

https://data.Icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>/<product_id>.xml

where <lang> stands for language code and <product_id> stands for Icecat product ID.

TIP: We advise the language-specific product content (Presentation_Value parameter) purely for the display of product data-sheets, not for search & compare. For that, we advise the standardized product content (the Value parameter) in both the /INT and the respective local language directories. For country-specific applications we advise LocalValue in stead of the international Value.

2.5 Languages supported and their codes

Currently, we support most world languages and European languages: in total more than 55 languages or locales (country-language combinations). Our intention is to support eventually all languages. See our overview of supported languages and locales. If you feel that your language or the language that you need is missing, feel free to contact us. Probably we can work something out.

In general, we follow the language codes as given by the ISO 639-1 standard. However, in some cases, we choose the simpler two-character country codes. For example, when it’s obvious to which language code it relates (e.g., BR for Brazilian-Portuguese, or US for US English).

2.6 Use Gzip/mod_deflate

As files become bigger and bigger, and the number of files is growing fast, we support the gzipping of all interface files. Instead of doing this per file individually, we applied gzipping to all interface files automatically (mod_deflate). To benefit from it, you have to add one parameter to your calls.

About mod_deflate: mod_deflate transports our interface files as compressed gzip data, but will show it transparantly in its original format in modern browsers.

To benefit in your server scripts from gzip, you must use in any HTTP request this additional parameter:

Accept-Encoding: gzip

It will enforce gzipping!

Example:

GET /export/level4/EN/10.xml HTTP/1.1

Host: prf.Icecat.biz

Accept-Encoding: gzip

User-Agent: Firefox/1.0

2.7 Use of HTTP like FTP, and an example of C# script to download files

We often get questions like can we use FTP instead. Actually, this is really not necessary as http has very similar capabilities to FTP.

Here is example code in C# to download files. You can use it also in ASP.NET code. We tested it and it works ok:

public static Byte[] DownloadIcecatFile() 
{
string strDownloadURL ="https://data.Icecat.biz/export/freexml/EN/480237.xml";
string strUser = "Your Login to Icecat Repository"; 
string strPWD = "Your Password to Icecat Repository";
 // Creating an instance of a WebClient 
WebClient req = new WebClient();
// Creating an instance of a credential cache,
// and passing the username and password to it
CredentialCache cache = new CredentialCache();
cache.Add(new Uri(strDownloadURL), "Basic", new NetworkCredential(strUser, strPWD)); 
req.Credentials = cache;
Byte[] fileData = req.DownloadData(strDownloadURL);
return fileData;

In Classic ASP, MSXML2.ServerXMLhttp can be used Some details are present here

3. Index files *.index.xml

3.1 Purpose

The purpose of the index files is to find the right product XML files for a given product. The matching between any portfolio and Icecat catalog has to be based on unique product identifiers and Icecat support few options:

  • Brand + Product code – The “key” is always Brand name + Product code. The combination of these identifiers should give a perfect hit.
  • GTIN (EAN / UPC) – These numerical identifiers are also available in XML index files at Icecat and can be used as a unique identifier for matching a product. Indication “IsApproved=1” means that we received a GTIN either from the manufacturer or from three independent distributor feeds. In all other cases, we tag a GTIN as “IsApproved=0”.
  • Brand + Distributor Product code – Icecat Catalog has an extensive and dynamically updated database of Product code mappings between product identifiers that comes from different distributors all over the world and the original manufacturer product codes. It opens an ability to make a matching by using a distributor Product code (M_Prod_Id) in combination with a brand name.

3.2 Index Types

There are four types of index files in our XML-OCI:

files.index.xml or .csv – An index file with references to product data-sheets in Open Icecat and with references to all described product data-sheets in Full Icecat

Path: https://data.icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>/files.index.xml.gz or .csv.gz

daily.index.xml or .csv– a smaller index file with only references to the new or changed product data-sheets of the respective day

Path: https://data.icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>/daily.index.xml.gz or csv.gz

on_market.index.xml or .csv – an index file with only the products that are currently on the market, as far as we can see that based on 100s of distributor and reseller price files

Path: https://data.icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>/on_market.index.xml.gz or csv.gz

Tip: use the on_market index file, in case that you think the full index file is too big for you to process or too inefficient. DISCLAIMER: if our monitor for your market is incomplete, the on_market index file is probably too incomplete for your purposes.

nobody.index.xml or .csv – an index file with the products that are or were on the market for which we only have basic market data, but no complete data-sheet.

Path: https://data.icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>/nobody.index.xml.gz or csv.gz

Tip: In case that you want to recategorize your products, for which we have no data-sheet (QUALITY=NOEDITOR), make use of the nobody index file

vertical.files.index.xml An index file with references to products that are in files.index.xml but limited to specific vertical. More information regarding vertical index files can be found here

Path: https://data.icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>/<verticalID>.vertical.files.index.xml.gz

Important note:

  • <verticalID> stands for the ID of a root category. You can find more information here
  • level4 – to access Full Icecat. In case of Open Icecat, use freexml.
  • The structure of complete files.index.xml and daily.index.xml are identical for a user’s convenience.

Files include the index information for each product and gives the path to the XML product file. Below is an example of a file tag in the index file:

file tag in the index file

The On_Market attribute indicates that a product is still on the market (On_Market=“1”) or not seen on the market anymore (On_Market=“0”).

Per product, Icecat provides also the GTIN (EAN or UPC) codes, used for logistical purposes. It is possible that there are multiple GTINs (EANs or UPCs), as this varies with packaging or importers.

Further, we provide the Product code variants, used in the market, in a sub-list (M_Prod_ID).

Finally, the <Country_Market Value=”US”/> indicates that we see the product at the moment in the catalogs of US channel partners. This tag can be useful to limit your view on the index file, in case you don’t have distributor imports to do that.

The Model_Name attribute contains the product name. The Product_View attribute indicates how many times the current product is requested.

We refresh files.index.xml and daily.index.xml every day. You can use daily.index.xml to update only the data in your local database that has changed or is new in the Icecat database. files.index.xml, you can use the first time for a full import of needed product information of active data-sheets for Open Icecat users and all existing data-sheets for Full Icecat users, and for the regular analysis of coverage of your product database.

Historic and obsolete products can be downloaded via the real-time interface.

TIP 1: download ONLY the xml files that you actually need for your shop or application by using a daily catalog export from your ERP or shop (or actually the daily imports from your distributors/suppliers) as a filter. It is useless to import all the global product data files if you only operate in one geographic area or have an assortment limited to a certain category.

TIP 2: check the timestamps to only download files that have changed or check only for new files, to improve update performance cycles.

TIP 3: the daily index file also includes the list of product codes that are removed the day before (QUALITY=REMOVED). We remove product data-sheets, for example, when editors map them away. You can use it for cleansing your catalog.

3.2 *.index.xml DTD

The latest version of the DTD is here

Each product has its own data file in XML format. Its location is defined by the attribute “path” in the *.index.xml.gz. The file content includes all the available product information for the respective product.

The “Prod_ID” attribute is a manufacturer’s unique identifier for a product, often called Brand Product Code (Manufacturer Part Number, code de fabricant, Produkt-Kode, artikelnummer, etc). In combination with the “supplier_id” (i.e., the brand identifier) it is the unique key to select a product’s XML file via Icecat’s internal identifier (“Product_id”).

M_Prod_ID consists of one or more manufacturer product code(s) that are present in distributor or partner feeds but are mapped to the original (correct) Prod_ID.

The EAN_UPC sub-list lists the GTIN codes (EAN or UPC) that refer to this product. There can be multiple codes, as these are logistical codes depending on packaging types and geography.

On_Market (1=Yes, 0=No) indicates whether Icecat sees a product somewhere on the market or not. The Country_Market lists the individual markets (countries), where Icecat sees that the product is present. This indication can be used to limit the view on our index file.

DISCLAIMER: Our market view is always imperfect as we depend on the data of connected channel partners and distributors.

Catid is Icecat’s internal category identifier. For example Catid=”151” refers to Notebooks. For every category there is a second, external, category identifier based on UNSPSC. In the reference files or the product XML the meaning of categories can be found.

“Quality” attribute values:

SUPPLIER – This content is received from a brand’s PIM or entered manually by a brand editor via the Icecat PIM, and is not yet standardized by an Icecat editor. The language-specific directories are likely to contain the full (unstandardized) data-sheet.

ICECAT – This content is entered and/or standardized by Icecat editors. Such standardized data is present in the INT directory and the language-specific directories.

NOEDITOR – The content is received from a merchant (in most cases one of the 100s of distributors we are daily “polling”) and may be parsed. Editors haven’t described this product yet. Icecat doesn’t export the NOEDITOR data in XML to 3rd parties.

4. Additional data

4.1 Brand name mapping data

To help you with matching distributor data to the Icecat rich content, we are publishing the mappings of used variants of manufacturer names to the Icecat Supplier_ID

You can find this file in your repository, named supplier_mapping.xml.

  • Open Icecat: http://data.icecat.biz/export/freexml/<lang>/supplier_mapping.xml
  • Full icecat: http://data.icecat.biz/export/level4/<lang>/supplier_mapping.xml

Where <lang> stands for language code

Within this file, you’ll find the match between different manufacturer name variations and the original manufacturer name. The format is self-explanatory. The DTD for the message format is available here.

4.2 Manufacturer part number mappings

Different distributors often produce different manufacturer part numbers (MPN) for the same product.

To help you correct the MPNs from different distributors and to help you to get the best coverage, we are publishing the available MPN mappings to the official MPN. In every repository directory, the file with product mappings is published in the index files (files.index.xml, etc.).

OBSOLETE METHOD product_mapping.xml:

INT/product_mapping.xml

EN/product_mapping.xml

etc…

Note: We advise not to use product_mapping.xml files anymore as it has an obsolete structure. All product mapping data is already present in the XML index files.

4.3 References

In product XML feeds, you will find a lot of structures. We included these as references in the product data files, e.g., categories, features, measures (units), etc.

The reference files are present in the /refs/ subdirectory. For example, for Full Icecat, at https://data.Icecat.biz/export/level4/refs/ and for Open Icecat at https://data.Icecat.biz/export/freexml/refs/

The included files (entities) are:

  • CampaignsList.xml
  • CategoriesList.xml.gz
  • CategoryFeatureIntervalsList.xml
  • CategoryFeaturesList.xml.gz
  • DistributorList.xml.gz
  • FeatureGroupsList.xml.gz
  • FeatureLogosList.xml.gz
  • FeatureValuesVocabularyList.xml.gz (translations of certain frequent feature values)
  • FeaturesList.xml.gz
  • LanguageList.xml.gz
  • LogisticsDataList.xml
  • MeasuresList.xml.gz
  • RelationsList.xml
  • SupplierProductFamiliesListRequest.xml.gz
  • SuppliersList.xml.gz

Almost all files are present in Gzipped format. The typical use of the files is in combination with data from the INT (international) directory, not the localized directories as there the language-specific values are already automatically applied to the product XML files.

To retrieve the files mentioned above, you can refer to the manual on obtaining Icecat export files. The manual outlines the steps to retrieve these files, ensuring a seamless integration with your data processing needs.

4.3.1 Campaigns list

Brand products can have campaigns for specific period. CampaignsList.xml has the list of all assigned campaigns.

Example:

CampaignsList.xml has the list of all assigned campaigns

4.3.2 Categories List

This chunk provides information on Icecat categories. Each category may be either searchable or not. Searchable categories may be used for product lookup by product feature values, as Icecat editors systematically maintain data integrity to allow smart searches.

Searchable=”1″: Use this category for product lookup in product list lookup requests.

Searchable=”0″: This category is not searchable (in our own product finder tools).

“Score” attribute in the response reflects the category usage statistic. The higher number means the higher the usage level. For example:

Score attribute

4.3.3 Category feature list request

This chunk provides information about features that are assigned to every single category and are used for describing products in the category.

Each searchable feature will have LimitDirection attribute defined, which will give advice for finding a “better” feature value, either < or >. E.g. for feature “Hard disk capacity” it would be > relation, and for the feature “Write seek” it would be < relation.

LimitDirection="0": The relation is undefined
LimitDirection="1": The relation is < 
LimitDirection="2": The relation is > 
LimitDirection="3": The relation is = 
Class="0": Key feature 
Class="1": Extra feature – tech details 

Sometimes the possible feature values are restricted to a limited set of values. In that case, we list the possible values for the combination Category-Feature in the container RestrictedValue.

4.3.4 Features list

Example:

Features list

4.3.5 Language list

Example:

Language list

4.3.6 Measure list (units)

Example:

Measure list

4.3.7 Relations list

Icecat has dynamic relations (x-sells). They based on the product sets, manually defined. One product set relates to another one.

Example:

Relations list

4.3.8 Supplier product families list request

This chunk provides the list of supplier product families. Each product family may have information about it’s Name, Description in different languages, and category.

4.3.9 Supplier list request (manufacturers)

From Supplier list users can identify if brand belongs to Full or Open Icecat.

Example:

Supplier list request

4.3.10 Popularity of products

We log all Icecat product requests (real-time requests by end-users and xml requests). This data gives a product popularity indication, useful for sorting products and analyzing market trends. We publish this popularity data is daily. On brand level, we show this popularity data online.

4.3.11 Standardized Product Summary Description

In response to questions from different clients, we have created a Standardized Product Summary Description. The local versions are here:

Where <lang> stands for the language code. Column 1 is the Icecat ID, and column 2 and 3 give a short and a long standardized product summary description.

The short summary of column 2 is set-up as follows:

short summary of column

The extended summary of column 3 is set-up as follows:

extended summary of column

TIP: Think about the guarantees that you get from your suppliers (distributors), based on errors made in their product descriptions. It may still be smart to make use of these supplier (distributor) texts in the ordering process for this reason.

5. Product XML data file

5.1 Repository file DTD

The XML repository files comply to the standard Icecat XML response DTD, which is located here:

Please, note that the tag “No=” (example: No=”100090″) is a Priority indicator. The higher the number the more important the feature or feature group is for buyer orientation. Thus, we advise you to sort features and feature groups by priority, to get a more customer-friendly user presentation.

Product code is a deprecated field, earlier it used as product response status. Now, product code always equals 1.

5.2 XML Schema definitions

Each Icecat XML has its XSD definition, you can see it as 2 mandatory attributes in the root XML tag.

You can find the basic information about XML Schema here. Icecat XSD sources are located at https://data.Icecat.biz/xsd/. Use these for Icecat XML validation.

5.3. Example product XML

You can check Icecat product XML example here for EN local

Example product XML

Notes:

  • Presentation_Value is the processed value which can be used as a display value in a data-sheet. It is based on the international (but localized) feature value with the localized measure unit and localized decimal separator (comma or dot depending on the country) or – if the international value is absent – on the language-specific value. Also, it contains an automatically transformed unit (e.g., we transform “665 mm” to the more friendly “66,5 cm” or “66.5 cm” depending on the user country).
  • LocalValue is a local transformation of our international Value attribute. It applies the local dictionary to Value and transforms values according to local standards. As in Value attribute LocalValue contains value of the feature and measurement unit as a separate attribute.

5.4. Other asset tags: 3D, bullet points, and Product Variants

Icecat supports 3D objects and Product Variants.

Bullet points are available through a separate tag.

See for a full overview: Digital Asset Types as Represented in Icecat’s Open Catalog Interfaces.

6. Possible Error Messages

You can see all the error messages that you can get while using XML files from Icecat via the following link

Chief Operating Officer at Icecat

  • commented on November 15, 2019 by Alan Stanley

    None of the above dtd links returns a full dtd file.

    Do I assume are unique to each product?

    Can you explain how is related to products.

    Thanks

  • commented on January 4, 2021 by Martin

    Is there any way of getting an index file per vertical, i.e. 2833 for Computers and Peripherals on it’s own, rather than the complete list?

    Thanks

  • commented on January 4, 2021 by Martin

    Is there a notification process for any changes in the categories, if they ever change?

    Thanks

  • commented on January 6, 2021 by Nduduzo

    Hi there, I would to ask for a Sony STR-DN610 SERVICE MANUAL, your help will be much appreciated thank you.

  • commented on January 16, 2021 by Martin

    Thanks for this.

    I’m still struggling to see how I would provide a category id and in what format to get the relevant products.

    Can you please provide and example for me?

    Thanks
    Martin…

  • commented on February 23, 2021 by Max

    How can we have the name and id of all the categories for a given vertical? Where are verticals in the .xml files that you provided here? Thank you

  • commented on June 22, 2021 by Martin

    Hi, is there a limit to how many queries I can make to the server at any one time? I’m getting a “GO AWAY” from the server when my program is downloading XML data sheets now.

    Thanks
    Martin…

    • Dear Martin

      For XML the limit is 100 connections from one IP, however, I suggest sticking to the number of 50-75.

      Kind regards

      Vazha Abramishvili

  • commented on January 27, 2022 by Milan

    Hi,

    can I filter products only on BRAND ?

    Thanks
    Milan

    • commented on January 28, 2022 by Wouter Maatman

      Hi Milan,
      Thanks, our country manager will contact you.
      Regards,
      Wouter

  • commented on March 14, 2023 by Dev

    Hi icecat,

    How to get data in multiple languages in a single call?

    Thanks & Regards,
    Nikita

    • commented on March 14, 2023 by Wouter Maatman

      Hi Dev, thanks for reaching out. Your country manager Gio Abramishvilli will contact you asap. Or in the meantime you can send a request to gio at icecat dot com. Thanks, Wouter

  • commented on September 6, 2023 by apieazyro

    How can I filter CategoriesList by an specific Language like English?

    • commented on September 8, 2023 by Wouter Maatman

      Hi apiazyro, the category list is multilingual. You can filter on “langid=XX”. Regards, Wouter

  • commented on November 22, 2023 by aplombdaynursery

    Hello,

    Is it possible to filter products based solely on the brand?

    Thanks,
    Milan

    • commented on November 23, 2023 by Wouter Maatman

      Hello Milan, thanks for your questions. You can filter on requesting a product XML by Brand and Product Code or by GTIN (EAN or UPC). See paragraph 2.2 in the manual. Regards, Wouter

  • commented on November 24, 2023 by spartanslaw

    Hello, is there a restriction on the number of queries I can send to the server simultaneously? I’m currently receiving a “GO AWAY” response from the server while my program is downloading XML data sheets.

    Thank you.

    • commented on November 24, 2023 by Wouter Maatman

      Hello, the max number of queries is 100 connections per second per IP. Regards, Wouter

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