A web feed is an XML file that is
specially coded to list the latest updates in a machine-readable format.
The web feed utility offers a new solution to work with these updates
and their static, unstructured content.
The Content Management System integration using web feeds enables
unstructured content such as static HTML, images and other multimedia
files managed in a Content Management System to be integrated with
WebSphere Commerce. By using this solution, business users can manage
unstructured content created in a Content Management System within
the Management Center. Additionally, this solution lowers the cost
of implementation by reducing the cost of integrating a Content Management
System with WebSphere Commerce by providing integration code.
The following diagram shows how the web feed utility interacts
with a WebSphere Commerce and a content management system.
Connects to a web feed using a supported connector.
HTTP connector
Supports both http and https.
FTP connector
Does not support secure ftp.
Two types of authentication can be used:
Basic authentication
Available for both http and https, an ID and password are required.
Client certificate authentication
This method is only available for https.
Retrieves the feed and parses the content. Only new or updated
entries are processed. To detect feed updates the eTag and the last
modified date of the feed URL are used.
Reads data from the web feed. The type of incoming data and its
destination must be specified in the configuration file. Updates can
be read from two different web feed standards without customizing
the utility:
RSS Reader
Parse and process feeds that comply with the RSS version 2.0 standard.
ATOM Reader
Parse and process feeds that comply with the Atom 1.0 standard.
Transforms the source data into WebSphere Commerce business
objects.
Allocates and resolves WebSphere Commerce business
objects to physical data. Two writers are supported.
Database writer
Write the physical objects to the database.
Web Server writer
Copy content to a local directory on the web server.
Transfer by ftp to a web server on a remote machine.
Stores the physical data in a database, remote system, or local
file system.
The web feed utility supports these scenarios:
Scenario 1: Managed file
Content is received as file.
Retrieve the file from a content management system for which the
location is received as an URL in the feed.
Two assets are created in the Assets tool:
Managed file
File attachment
Sample feed configuration file
Scenario 2: URL attachment
Content is received as URL.
Content life cycle is managed by Content Management System
URL received from Content Management System which points to the
Content Management System content
Create URL attachment in the Assets tool
Sample feed configuration file
Scenario 3: Web server
Content is received as a file and stored on the web server.
Retrieve the files from Content Management System.
Files are copied to web server by FTP or local copy.
Create URL attachment in Assets tool. URL attachments are created
when content is copied to web server.
1 The webURL attribute is the base
URL which can be used to access the imported content. This base URL
is also used to create the URL attachment.
The web feed utility can process RSS and Atom
feeds in various languages. For an Atom feed, every unique value of
a Category within an entry maps to a unique attachment in WebSphere
Commerce. For an RSS feed, for an every unique value of a Category
within an entry maps to a unique attachment in WebSphere Commerce.
The utility creates different attachment assets for the same attachment
when multiple entries within a feed that contain the same category.
If category information is missing in the feed; then a combination
of the identifier and title entry is used to generate a unique attachment.
The utility supports one asset per language within an attachment,
for example within the same attachment, you cannot have two English
assets. You can have assets in different languages for the same attachment.
To determine the language of every attachment asset and attachment
description is decided based on the language information specified
in the feed (in the XML 1.0 IETF RFC 3066 standard).
For Atom
feeds (Atom Specification 1.0) the language information is retrieved
from each individual entry. For RSS feeds language details are retrieved
at the feed level. If no language information is present in the feed,
the default business context language is assumed for the attachment
asset or description.
Using the web feed utility
You can either
run the web feed utility from the command line, or you can run it
as a scheduled job using the scheduler.
Customization
Without customization, the
web feed utility interacts with Content Management Systems that provide
RSS Version 2 or ATOM Version 1 web feed support. The main areas of
the web feed utility that you can customize are:
Write your own feed parser to read RSS and Atom feeds which are
in a format that is not supported by default, including any versions
of RSS other than Version 2.0 and any version of Atom other than 1.0.
Write your own Business Object Mediator to load data to specific
database tables that are not supported by default. The mediators provided
with this utility can write data to the CMFILE tables.
You can write your own implementation to handle Content Management
System-specific security mechanisms. You do this by extending the
Connector layer, see CustomAuthHTTPConnector for details.
Limitations
The web feed utility cannot be enabled in Workspaces.
The web feed utility does not support the delete scenario. That
is, when you delete content from Content Management System the content
is not deleted from WebSphere Commerce.