Recently I had to accept new Terms & Conditions for my Google Froogle Base Feeder account. A major change included in this update was the fact that products being uploaded to Froogle must now include the product condition. Previously condition was not a requirement for products added via your Google Base Feeder account so some of my clients had questions on if the automatic Froogle addon for ZenCart would still function properly. Below I list information regarding condition as explained by Google and code showing that the Froogle ZenCart addon still functions properly.

Google Froogle Condition Field:

There are three types of conditions that items can be tagged which are explained below. These explanations are directly from this link at Google.

• New: The product is brand new and in perfect condition. It has never been opened, used, or worn. If the product normally comes packaged, it is in its original packaging with all original packaging materials and does not contain any blemishes.
• Used: The product has been used, worn, or opened. This includes sealed items with blemishes, open box items, or unsealed collectible items for resale.
• Refurbished:The product has been refurbished, remanufactured, or recertified by the manufacturer or a professional third-party remanufacturer to meet original manufacturer specifications, and includes a warranty.

ZenCart Google Base (Froogle) Feeder Addon:

So I wanted to make sure this still worked properly with the new Terms & Conditions so I verified using the below two pieces of information.

• Checking Froogle Interface: I verified in the Froogle interface that my items each have the condition set as “New”. All of my items are brand new so this appears to be correct.
• Froogle Addon Code:I searched the googlefroogle.php file for condition using the grep command from the CLI and located the code below.
  Command Used:

  more frooglegoogle.php | grep -i CONDITION
  

  Code Located:

  $additional_attributes .= ", p.products_upc, p.products_isbn, p.products_condition, p.products_category";
  if (GOOGLE_BASE_ASA == 'true' && $products->fields['products_condition'] != '') {
  $content["condition"] = '' . $products->fields['products_condition'] . '';
  $content["condition"] = '' . GOOGLE_FROOGLE_CONDITION . '';
  

So all appears to be well with the ZenCart Google Froogle addon. If anyone notices issues with this addon please post a note here so others can be aware of issues and hopefully as a community we can help resolve your issues.

Getting Productive With Google Apps

James Beswick. 415 Systems, Inc. 2009, Paperback, 196 pages, $19.95

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 12:45 AM and is filed under Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.