Varle.lt feed for Shopify

Varle reads one XML file from a public URL; its own closing checklist opens with “verify that the provided XML url works”. There is no upload, no SFTP and no API for products; the hosted URL is the whole transport.

The cadence is published, which is rarer than it should be: the VARLE system updates full product information weekly and balances and prices daily. Imports do not run in real time when you change the file, and Varle asks you to flag drastic changes. Feedflock hosts the file on a stable URL and regenerates it every hour, so every scheduled import reads a current version.

Varle offers two XML structures and recommends the one without the category tree, the variant this template follows. The envelope is <root> wrapping <products> wrapping <product>, and each product names its category directly: a leaf NAME from Varle's own tree, because that tree publishes titles and full paths but no ids. Varle recommends indicating only the final product category.

Ten tags are mandatory: id, categories, title, description, price, delivery_text, images, quantity, barcode_format and barcode. Free product attributes go into the same <attributes> block as the shipping flags, and they do two jobs: shown as a table in the product description, they also create and populate the category filters, so a product without attributes is invisible to a filtering shopper.

Varle's variant mechanism is the single most expensive trap on the spec: a <variant> price is a DIFFERENCE from the product's base price. Varle's own example prices a €150/€200/€250 wardrobe as 0, 50 and 100. Nothing in a standard Shopify catalog holds those deltas, so the template renders one <product> per variant, each with its own real price.

The run is tied together by <group>, which is Varle's own documented alternative: “if several identical products (shirts) in different colors are imported, the same group should be indicated for both products.” The distinguishing option goes into the title, which is what the template's default name (product title plus variant title) does for you.

The price is the final price for the customer, including VAT, with no currency token, and Varle's documentation names the separator: a period, not a comma. The quantity is a whole number, and 0 is how you unpublish: “after adjusting the product quantity to 0, the product will become invisible and not for sale on the website.” A sold-out variant therefore stays in the feed with 0 rather than being dropped.

The crossed-out price, <price_old>, is bound to the Omnibus rule: Lithuanian law and Varle's own rules allow a promotional price when the product price has not changed for at least 30 days (new products and new sellers get 30 days' grace). Shopify's compare-at price is an aspirational list price on most shops, so the template maps nothing here by default. Sending it would be a legal claim, not a field copy.

Varle sells the item and arranges the carriage, so the feed carries no delivery price at all. Your only feed-level say in shipping is the lead time (delivery_text, a mandatory element in Varle's own format such as “1-2 d.d.”, specified on working days) and the ability to ban parcel lockers for goods that will not fit.

The ban vocabulary is six flags (one blanket, five per carrier: Venipak, Itella, Omniva, LPexpress, DPD), and they are attributes, not elements. They are tri-state: empty and “true” both mean available, only “false” disables. “Attributes only accept certain values, otherwise your import will fail,” so the template omits an unmapped flag rather than writing anything. Weight does the rest: Varle's global rules ban parcel machines for goods over the locker weight limit automatically, but only if the weight tag is filled.