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Archive for the 'Google' Category
Next Entries »How To : Google Base XML Feed Auto-Submission
Monday, December 17th, 2007I had a mildly tough time with getting my feeds sent to Google Base on a nightly schedule without doing it manually. I went through trying to use the Zend API tool, and just kept getting stuck. I then realized it was far easier to create my feed and FTP it to Google using crontab. Like anything else, if I had a problem, I’m sure someone else did as well, so I of course want to share my information.
- Step 1: Setup your feed according to Google Base specifications. Use this 5 step wizard for your feed-type.
- Step 2: Register for a Google Base account if you don’t have one already.
- Step 3: Upload and test your feed. Wait up to 24 hours for processing the feed. Then check for errors, and fix if you find any.
- Step 4: Creat an FTP account with Google by clicking “sign up” in the lower right portion of the Account Management page of Google Base. This link may work for you:
- Step 5: Create a PHP file that FTP’s your feed to Google. Code is below.
- Step 6: Create a cronjob to run that PHP file on a regular schedule. I used the following cronjob to make it run at 1:30 AM everyday.
30 01 * * * /usr/local/bin/curl http://www.mysite.com/googfeed/ftp.php
PHP Code for FTP’ing to Google
Next Entries »$host = "uploads.google.com";
$ftp_user_name = "INSERT YOUR GOOGLE FTP USERNAME"; //this does not equal your Google Account username.
$ftp_user_pass = "INSERT YOUR GOOGLE FTP PASSWORD"; //again not equal to Google Account password.
$remote_file = "google-base.xml"; //Change this to match the exact name of the file you setup in Google Base as your upload file.
$file = "/usr/home/htdocs/feed/google-base.xml"; // This need to be the full path to the filey ou want to send to google.// setup $host and $file variables for your setup before here...
$hostip = gethostbyname($host);
$conn_id = ftp_connect($hostip);// login with username and password
$login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user_name, $ftp_user_pass);// IMPORTANT!!! turn passive mode on
ftp_pasv ( $conn_id, true );if ((!$conn_id) || (!$login_result)) {
echo "FTP connection has failed!";
echo "Attempted to connect to $host for user $ftp_user_name";
die;
} else {
echo "Connected to $host, for user $ftp_user_name
“;
echo “Host IP is $hostip
“;// upload a file
if (ftp_put($conn_id, $remote_file, $file, FTP_BINARY)) {
echo “successfully uploaded $file
“;
} else {
echo “There was a problem while uploading $file
“;
}// close the connection
ftp_close($conn_id);
}
?>
