Why download a datafeed with 5000 records if only 5 records have changed since your last download?

Fortunately, if you’re an Affiliate in the AvantLink network you no longer have to. Last week we rolled out some changes to our datafeed download system that gives Affiliates the option to download only the incremental changes since their last download or a specified date. These new options can drastically reduce the size of your downloads and any subsequent processing time.

Here are the details on the additional parameters that you can add to your standard datafeed downloads URLs:

• incr – Use this parameter to trigger an incremental download. Options include the following:
  • only-modified: This will retrieve all products that have been added to or changed in the merchant’s datafeed since a given date.
  • only-removed: This will retrieve all products that have been removed from the merchant’s datafeed since a given date.
  • all-status: This option modifies the layout of your download slightly by adding an additional “Status” column (or node, for XML formatted feeds). This allows you to simultaneously retrieve new/modified products (“Status” = “Modified”) and removed products (“Status” = “Removed”) in a single request.
• from – Use this parameter to set the date from which new/modified/removed products should be retrieved. Dates should be formatted as “YYYY-mm-dd” or “YYYY-mm-dd HH:ii:ss”. If you leave this off your request (but still use one of the above “incr” options) then our script will automatically determine the date you last downloaded this datafeed, and use that as the reference point.

If you have any questions or comments about this functionality feel free to contact us.

Scott & AvantLink