Profile: zootie
Another suggestion. I presume most supported feeds use XML internally. And while XML might be the way that most custom feeds should be setup (rather than CSV), in practice it is a bit too complicated (and most opt for CSV). But if you wanted to provide a way to provide custom XML feeds (for those customers that do need to support XML). it seems a bit complicated to provide a method to support custom XML formatting (yet still be able to use the component's scheduling and transfer functionality)
A possible way to generate an outbound XML feed would be to use SQL XML. Allow the user to provide a SQL statement that retrieves data from the nopC database and build the XML. nopFeedManager would execute the SQL statement on the schedule and post the output.
So the feature would allow the execution of custom SQL. It could either output XML, or a single recordset (that would get exported to CSV - a way to avoid having to specify custom XML feed specifications, just query the database and build the CSV from that).
It is not very user friendly (ie, using SQL), but it is a powerful way to interface with the database (and could be much simpler than having users edit XML files.
This would only work for outbound feeds, since it wouldn't have a field mapping specification (of where to save inbound data)
Offer other methods to transfer/transmit a custom feed file. Namely:
* Save to path - being able to save/copy the file to a local or UNC path. This could be used to export the file to a locally hosted FTP server (so partners can download the feed if their system is setup to do an FTP pull).
* Email - Send the feed through email. Rather than prompting for SMTP credentials, it should allow to choose an existing nopC email account, being able to choose different accounts for each feed. Maybe have a generic message/email body (use nopC template system? - the way it handles the accounts is IMO a bit limited, so maybe not, or allow to override the template's email account, to avoid adding duplicating records just to override the account, which IMO is the main shortcoming of nopC template system).
* Post to URL - probably too involved for anything that isn't XML based (ie, not really CSV friendly), which isn't necessarily within the scope
Maybe add a path to FTP delivery (in case the file is not expected on the root/home folder).
The feed should be transmittable through one or more methods (ie, being able to FTP and email).
Thank you,
Gabriel