Changes to data feed management in the Content API for Shopping

Starting today, the Datafeeds service will allow you to use the Content API for Shopping to set up data feeds that target multiple countries and/or languages, which a recent update added to the Merchant Center. The update to the Datafeeds service will also allow you more control over the destinations for products in data feeds managed via the Content API.

What's changing?
To handle feeds that target multiple countries and/or languages, a new targets field is being added. This field contains a list of targets, and each target contains the following fields: Note: The above links to the reference documentation for the new fields will go live on the same day that the feature is introduced.

The following now-redundant fields are being deprecated: Currently, code that uses these deprecated fields will continue to work as before for managing feeds with a single target. Any changes made via these deprecated fields will also appear as a single target in the new targets field, and vice versa if the targets field contains a single target. These deprecated fields will not be returned when retrieving feeds with multiple targets. Since these deprecated fields may be removed in the future, we recommend migrating your code to use the new targets field now.

To support feeds that have multiple targets, the Datafeedstatuses.get method now takes two additional parameters: These new parameters must be supplied for feeds that have multiple targets, since the status of a feed may differ depending on the target. These parameters can be omitted when retrieving the status of a feed with a single target.

Similarly, when retrieving all feed statuses using the Datafeedstatuses.list method, you will receive multiple entries for a feed with multiple targets, where each entry corresponds to a particular target.

What do I need to do?
To manage feeds that use any of the following features, you must update your code to use the new targets field:
  • Feeds that target multiple countries and/or languages
  • Feeds that exclude destinations that are included by default
In addition, you must supply the new country and language parameters when retrieving the status of a feed that has multiple targets.

Otherwise, your existing code will continue to work as before. However, since we may remove the old fields in the future, we recommend you update your code for managing data feeds to use the new targets field.

Note: To use the new targets field and the new country and language parameters if you are using one of the Content API client libraries, update to a version published on or after Sep 21, 2017.

If you have any questions or feedback about the changes to data feed management or other questions about the Content API for Shopping, please let us know on the forum.