Facebook (Meta) | Creating an XML feed for Facebook Catalog Manager (Meta Commerce Manager)

How to create data feeds for your Facebook and Instagram marketing through the Facebook Commerce Manager

In this article, you'll learn how to set up an XML feed for Facebook Commerce Manager using Plytix. This requires you to have a Plytix account with the Channels feature enabled.

 

 

Setting up an XML Channel

Attributes for Facebook Catalog

Choosing products

Customizing the feed for Facebook's specifications

Processing the feed

Adding the feed to Meta Commerce Manager

 

*Skip to any section in this article by clicking on the links above

 

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Setting up an XML Channel

As all Channels in Plytix, an XML Channel lets you customize the products and attributes you want to use to populate your template. To get started, you first need to create a Channel:

1. Go to the 'Channels' area in the top navigation menu.
2. Click 'Add Channel'.
3. Select the 'XML' format option and then click the purple 'Add Channel' button. 

Once inside the Channel, you'll need to select the attributes you want to be included in your Facebook Catalog XML feed. 

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Attributes for Facebook Catalog

The first tab in your XML Channel setup is called 'Attributes'. This is where you'll add all the content you want to appear in your XML feed.

Facebook Reference Material

Facebook's requirements could change at any time. Please refer to these documents provided by Facebook to have the most up to date information about setting up these feeds.

• Creating a Data Feed
• Data Feed Fields and Specifications for Catalogs

Choosing and Transforming Attributes

In the 'Attributes' tab, select the attributes you want to make up your feed.

1. Click 'Add Attributes'.
2. Select the attributes that have the content (not necessarily the name) that matches the content you want to output in the feed. When you are finished, click the purple 'Add attributes' button.
   
   
   Now that you have selected your attributes, you may need to transform them. To make any transformations, click the 'Options' icon next to the attribute or add a new Computed Attribute.

 

 

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Choosing Products

Add a Product list containing the products you want to include in your feed by navigating to the 'Products' tab and choosing a list from the dropdown menu. Alternatively, you may choose to create a new list by clicking ' + Create a list'.

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Customizing the feed to fit Facebook specifications

Next, navigate to the 'Format' tab, to set up the feed so it conforms with the specifications set by Facebook. With the loaded attributes and product list, a preview of the feed is generated alongside the "nodes" that contain each piece of information we need.

Below we look at how to further define the XML feed.

Example Feed

For this example, we will be using the following sample feed provided by Facebook:

Header

The first part <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> is automatically applied by Plytix. 

RSS Node

Our first task is to add the RSS node. To do this:

1. Click the ' + Add Node' button on the top right of the "Nodes" area.
2. An "Edit node" panel will appear where you can customize the node.

3. In the "Node Tag" input, write "rss".

4. Then we add three additional node attributes by clicking ' + Add attribute ' (below the "Parent Node" dropdown menu) three times and filling them in as follows:

• XML Attribute: version           Value: 2.0
• XML Attribute: xmlns:g           Value: http://base.google.com/ns/1.0
• XML Attribute: xmlns:atom    Value: http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom

6. Finally, press 'Okay' at the top of the panel to add the node to the Feed builder.

Channel

We now add a "channel" node as a sub node to the <rss> node. We do this by selecting the 'Add subnode' icon on the <rss> node or the ' + Add node' button at the top of the feed builder. 

In the "Add node" panel, make sure the parent node is set to "rss". We change the "Node Tag" to "channel" and press the purple 'Add node' button.

Leaf Nodes

We can now add title, link and description nodes. These three nodes must all share the <channel> node as parent and they must be created as Leaf nodes.

1. On the <channel> node, click the 'Add subnode' icon.
   
2. Add the "Node Tag" which can be something like "title" to signify that this node contains the name of the catalog you are creating. 
3. Activate the 'Leaf node' switch. This will give us a field where we can write in a value. Here we have used "Sample Title" as the name of our catalog.
   
4. Click 'Add node'.
5. Repeat these steps twice to create "description" and "link" nodes. 
6. For the last leaf node we have to do something slightly different. Add a subnode to the <channel> node and make it a leaf node as before, but this time change the "Closing Tags" to "Self-closing".
   
   
7. As we did with the rss node, you'll need to add three XML attributes to this leaf node by clicking ' + Add attribute' three times. Label them as follows:
   
   • XML Attribute: href    Value: https://www.mydealsshop.foo/pages/test-feed
   • XML Attribute: rel       Value: self
   • XML Attribute: type    Value: application/rss+xml
8. When you have your three attributes click the purple 'Add node' button. All your leaf nodes will appear below the <channel> node.

Formatting Attribute Names

As you may have noticed in the example feed above, the names of attributes in our feed do not yet conform to facebook's specifications.

To update this: 

1. Click on the 'Edit node' icon on the <product> node with the orange "PRODUCTS" label.
2. Change the "node tag" to "item".

Repeat this for all node tags that require changes to conform to facebook naming conventions. Below is a table of some of the required field (attribute) names used by facebook. All required and optional field names can be found here.

Name in Plytix	Facebook Requirement
SKU	id
Label	title
Description	description
product landing page	link
Hero Image	image_link
Brand	brand
Availability	availability
Condition	condition
GTIN	gtin

 

When you're finished, your feed builder should look something like this:

We also need to delete to topmost <products> node that all of our items current live under.

This moves all nodes up a hierarchy level and we can see that our feed content and hierarchy is starting to look a lot like what Facebook wants it to look like:

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Processing the feed

Our feed is now complete. All necessary data is included, hierarchy levels are in order, and naming conventions are adjusted for Facebook.

To finalize the feed, you need to process it. This will apply and update all your product information. It will then generate a feed link and file that you can plug into Facebook Commerce Manager.

To process your feed: 

1. Go to the top of the Channel area.
2. Click the     button. In the next window that appears, adjust settings to update/add products and click .

Once the feed has completed processing, you will see a link appear below the feed name. Click to copy the link by clicking on the 'Copy' icon.
This link can be copied and pasted from Plytix into your Facebook Commerce Manager. Once your feed link is in Facebook, you can update and process your Channel to bring in new updates directly to Facebook Catalog without needing to replace the link. 

 

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Adding the Feed to Facebook (Meta) Commerce Manager

The last step in this process must be completed by logging into your Meta Business Manager Account. Once you have logged in, proceed to the Commerce Manager tool and select the catalog you'll be using your feed to update.

1. First, select 'Items' under the Catalog menu, then 'Add multiple items' from the 'Add items' dropdown menu.

2. Several source options will appear. Select 'Data Feed' and click 'Next'.

3. Next, you'll add the feed link you copied from your Channel in Plytix. Add login details if your feed is password protected. Click 'Next'.

4. Choose how often you want to update your catalog using this feed. Selecting the 'Add automatic updates' option will ensure that each time your feed is processed by Plytix, it is also updated by Commerce Manager.

5. Lastly, name your data source and select a default currency to display prices, then click the blue 'Upload' button.

Once your feed has finished uploading, your products will be displayed within your catalog. If you receive any error messages, simply fix the error in your feed, process it in Plytix, and update again.

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What's Next

• Learn how to create a channel
• Learn how to create a custom XML feed for Google Merchant Center
• Learn how to sync products to your Shopify store

 

 

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