We’ve posted a new sample to the Commerce Server Workspace on gotdotnet that shows how you can publish an RSS feed on your site that contains product information from your Commerce Server 2007 catalogs. This work is the result of a really great intern project from this summer. The project includes:
- An RSS Subscription page where users can configure their feed
- Classes that encapsulate the querying of catalog information and the generation of the RSS 2.0 XML
- A PuP package containing the Commerce RSS resource (also serves as a good example of a custom resource)
- A README file documenting the installation steps and the classes included in the project
The RSS sample works together with the Commerce Server 2007 Starter Site CTP release currently. The subscription page lets a user manage their feed. The user can configure the feed to show the most recent items that have been added to the catalog. Users can also use the Subscription page to search the catalog and add items to their feed to be included in one of three conditions:
- always include
- include when on sale (discount applies)
- include when in stock
The instructions cover adding a button on the product page so a user can add the product to their custom feed. For example users might track the item for price updates or for inventory condition changes. It’s not hard to imagine more advanced scenarios that utilize custom schema extensions in the RSS XML that allow rich cross-site sharing of catalog data.
The usual disclaimers apply (see the license on the gotdotnet site).