About attributes
What attributes are and how they relate to export templates and analyzer tests.
Every channel, such as Google Merchant Center or Amazon, expects to receive a number of specific attributes per product, order, shipment, or other item relevant to the channel. This is why all export templates in the Developer Portal can have attributes associated with them.
An attribute is a characteristic of an item, for example, title, id, color, or price.
There are 2 types of attributes in the Developer Portal:
- Mandatory attributes are a requirement on the channel side.
- Optional attributes are a nice-to-have.
On the export template setup page, mandatory attributes display Yes in the Mandatory column, while optional attributes display No:
Although optional attributes aren't a requirement, we always recommend that our customers send as many attributes as possible, both mandatory and optional.
On the channel side, there are requirements for both the list of mandatory and optional attributes and the values accepted for each of those attributes. To avoid your items being rejected by the channel, you can use analyzer tests that validate attribute values before sending them to the channel. See Analyzer tests for more information.
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