In this article you will find:
Overview
The Hawk Search service enables online retailers and publishers the ability to drive a rich, compelling user experience. This experience drives visitors to the products and information that they seeking. One main step of integration is providing a standard data feed set that the Hawk Search solution expects.
Data Feed Requirements
The Hawk Search service powers search, navigation, and merchandising aspects of a web-based application. The Hawk Search solution does not index your entire database, but it requires necessary data to drive an exceptional shopping experience. For example, a typical online retailer would need their product catalog indexed. Some data values that would be included in a data feed are product title, description, price, and manufacturer name.
Formatting Options
Hawk Search understands that clients already have existing data feeds that are being sent to third-party systems such as marketplaces. Hawk Search is designed to be agnostic – we can handle all types of data feed format.
Here are a few data feed formats that we have already integrated into Hawk Search:
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Hawk Search Standard Data Feed Format
Along with handling third-party data feed formats, Hawk Search has a Standard Data Feed Format. This format is meant to be comprehensive, flexible, and easy for all clients to create.
The standard data format is designed to make it easy to add any number of attribute data for the items easily without increasing the file size too much. If certain columns do not apply to your data or you need to add additional columns to existing files those changes can be incorporated. However please consult with the Hawk Search representative before making these changes.
File Format Requirements
To support a successful data import, we require the following format requirements:
Flat-File Format Properties
Encoding | UTF-8 |
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Column Delimiter | Tab, Comma |
Column Headers | Required; Case Sensitive |
Row Delimiter | Unix Format (\n as a row delimiter) |
File Name | Lowercase (e.g. items.txt, attributes.txt, hierarchy.txt) |
Data Quality | The data on the file should follow strict CSV standards. For standard CSV format please reference the link below: |
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Main Data Feed
FILE NAME: items.txt
The Main Data Feed file consists of records that describe each product or content. Each record is represented by a unique ID and other values that support this unique record. The additional columns contained in this data feed file have a one-to-one relationship with the unique ID.
For example, a data feed file contains product catalog records. The unique ID is the product SKU and supporting values with one-to-one relationships are product title, product description, retail price, and sale price. A unique ID will never have two product titles or two retail prices.
If your site contains configurable products and has a single parent product and multiple children product that associate to the parent product, you can specify these as separate line items on the main data feed. For any information that is common to both the parent and child (example: description), you can repeat that description information in both columns for the parent and child items. To specify the relationship between the parent and child item please specify the id of the parent item in the group_id column value line item for the child
Please reference the items.txt sample file that was provided with the data feed guidelines for an example. In that sample item ABC123 is a parent and item with sku ABC12345 is a child item and references the id of the parent in the group_id column to specify the relationship.
The creation of this data feed file may consist of table joins on the client's data layer, but Hawk Search expects one file. For each row, values that don't exist (e.g. sale price) can be left blank. If additional data values are required, column names can be added. Contact the Hawk Search Professional Services for any custom modifications. The items.txt is the filename to use for the Main Data Feed. Also, the column headers must match the column names listed below. The column names are case-sensitive.
Pre-Configured Data Columns
Column Name | Data Description | Required |
unique_id | Unique Alphanumeric ID. Must not be duplicated. | Yes |
Name | Item Title | Yes |
url_detail | URL of Record Detail Page | Yes |
Image | URL of thumbnail image | Yes |
price_retail | Floating Point Value - Retail Price | Yes |
price_sale | Floating Point Value – Sale Price | Yes |
price_special | Floating Point Value – Special Price if offered |
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group_id | Rollup Key. If used, this field must be filled in for all items. |
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description_short | Searchable Short Description |
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description_long | Long Description |
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Sku | Alphanumeric Manufacturer SKU / Model# |
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sort_default | Default sort if available on the site end for items based on an integer rank calculated on the site |
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sort_rating | Floating Point Value of Avg Rating |
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is_free_shipping | Binary Value if Free Shipping (0 or 1) |
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is_new | Binary Value if New (0 or 1) |
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is_on_sale | Binary Value if On Sale (0 or 1) |
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keyword_tags | List of Searchable Keywords Separated by Commas (e.g. horror,suspense,drama) |
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metric_days_added | Integer Value of Days Record Added |
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metric_inventory | Integer Value of Total Inventory |
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metric_pct_bounceback | Floating point Value of Bounce Back % |
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metric_pct_conversion | Floating Point Value of Conversion Rate |
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metric_pct_on_sale | Floating Point Value of On Sale Percentage |
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metric_profit_dollars | Floating Point Value of Profit Dollars |
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metric_profit_margin | Floating Point Value of Profit Margin |
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metric_sales_velocity | Floating Point Value of Sales Velocity Score |
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metric_total_details_views | Integer Value of Total Detail Page Views |
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metric_total_units_sold | Integer Value of Total Units Sold |
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item_operation | When using partial updates this column will need to be filled out on partial files. "D" indicates that the item will need to be deleted. "A" indicates item was added/updated. For full files you can leave this column empty since it will be ignored. |
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Please note that:
- All columns do not need to exist in items.txt
- Make sure all required column names are present
- If you wish to add columns to the file please discuss with the Hawk Search Professional Services Team.
This is a screenshot example of items.txt. 
Attributes Data Feed
FILE NAME: attributes.txt
The Attributes Data Feed file consists of records that relate to unique IDs. There may be multiple records related to a unique ID. Each record consists of a unique ID, an attribute key name, and an attribute value.
For example, ten rows can exist in the Attributes Data Feed that relate to one unique ID. These ten rows describe that the unique ID is in five different product categories, has three different colors, is for a woman, and is a clearance item.
The creation of this data feed file may consist of table joins on the client's data layer. Hawk Search will be expecting one file, attributes.txt, to include all related attributes to the unique ID. To add additional attributes in the future, additional records would be added to attributes.txt.
Pre-Configured Data Columns
Column Name | Data Description | Required |
unique_id | Unique Alphanumeric ID. Must not be duplicated. | Yes |
Key | The name of the attribute | Yes |
Value | The value of the attribute | Yes |
Please Note:
- Attribute Keys should be properly-cased for display and consistent(e.g. Color)
- Attribute Values should be standardized across each Attribute Key (e.g. Blue vs Navy or Indigo) and correctly cased as it should appear on the filters. For example if color value is blue, then you should stick to the correct casing for all items that have the color value and the casing should be consistent to what you want to have appear on facet values example (Blue)
- Category ID values should consist of the lowest level categories. Hawk Search will understand the higher level categories associated with an item.
- If both parents and children are specified on the items file please link all child attributes to the child unique_id and the parent attributes to the parent item unique_id
This is a screenshot example of attributes.txt. 
Category Hierarchy
FILE NAME: hierarchy.txt
Hawk Search's Agile Navigation supports multi-level hierarchies. For rapid deployment, we require the hierarchy.txt file to represent the category hierarchy. It is a straightforward way to represent the hierarchy in a flat file format and can support multi-level hierarchies. Unique IDs would map to these hierarchies through the Attributes Data Feed (attributes.txt). As with all data feeds, any customization to this feed will involve the Hawk Search Professional Services Team.
Pre-Configured Data Columns
Column Name | Data Description | Required |
category_id | Unique Alphanumeric ID. No duplicate values are accepted. | Yes |
category_name | The name of the Category | Yes |
parent_category_id | The Category ID of the Parent Category. For the top level Categories, use 0 (zero) as the parent_category_id | Yes |
is_active | If you wish to send over all categories to Hawk Search including disabled categories |
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sort_order | The sort order value that should be used while displaying this in the filter if it is available | No |
This is a screenshot example of hierarchy.txt. 
Content Data Feed
FILE NAME: content.txt
How-to articles and non-product content can be indexed as well. Similar to the Main Data Feed, each record is represented by a unique ID and other values that support this unique record. The additional columns contained in this data feed file have a one-to-one relationship with the unique ID.
The creation of this data feed file may consist of table joins on the client's data layer, but Hawk Search expects one file. For each row, values that don't exist (e.g. sale price) can be left blank. If additional data values are required based on Business Requirements, column names can be added. Contact the Hawk Search Professional Services for any custom modifications.
Also, the column headers must match the column names listed below. The column names are case-sensitive.
Column Name | Data Description | Required |
unique_id | Unique Alphanumeric ID. Must not be duplicated. | Yes |
Name | Item Title | Yes |
url_detail | URL of Record Detail Page | Yes |
Image | URL of thumbnail image |
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description_short | Item Description – Since this is non-product content, include the full text of the item. Strip out all tab, carriage return, and line feed characters. |
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content_operation | When using partial updates this column will need to be filled out on partial files. "D" indicates that the item will need to be deleted. "A" indicates item was added/updated. For full files you can leave this column empty since it will be ignored. | Yes for partial updates |
Please note that:
Attributes can be associated with these items if the unique_id values match.
This is a screenshot example of the content.txt file:
If content is not in a structured format, contact the Hawk Search Professional Services Team to use other approaches to crawl your content sources. One approach is using our Content Aggregation tool, Blosm, to transform unstructured data to structured content.
Timestamp/Control File
FILE NAME: timestamp.txt
To ensure your data feeds are ready for processing, we recommend adding a timestamp/control file to the set of files that is generated by your site process. This ensures that proper checks will be in place to validate the files before they are indexed.
The timestamp file contains the following details:
- The time that your process finished generating the data feeds in UTC
- Whether the dataset is a full or partial feed
- The name of the file followed by the count of lines for each of the files
Every time the Hawk Search process runs to index the new data, we use the data provided in the timestamp file to run a series of checks.
Download Timestamp File
The timestamp file is downloaded from the web accessible URL or the FTP server. This will enable the Hawk Search process to verify that the site is generating files at an agreed upon frequency.
Timestamp check
The first check consist of checking the date and time of the files provided. If the Hawk Search process is expecting the site to generate a file every 3 hours. The process checks the timestamp file and it is from 6 hours prior, the Hawk Search will not download or reprocess the files. The process will throw an error to notify the team that files are out of date.
Partial or Full Feed
The next check consist of establishing if the data files are full or partial feeds. Based on this information, we run the appropriate process.
File Name Check
A check will be done on the names of the files. The system will react different based on the scenarios outlined below:
- If one of the expected files are not provided, the system will throw an error.
- If the name of the file is different than originally provided, then the system will throw an error.
- If an additional file is provided with a name that was not previously established, the file will be ignored.
Line Count
The last check is on the counts of lines for each of the file. The system will be confirming that the row counts provided in the timestamp file match the counts on the actual files. If the counts match, the system will proceed as normal. If the counts do not match, the system will throw an error. This is to eliminate indexing files that were partially downloaded or were corrupted during downloads
Rebuilding Index
The indexing process on the Hawk Search end will be scheduled to run in accordance with the feed generation schedule on the site end.
There is also the option of a REST API available at the URL below. This URL can be used for re-building the index for the site once the feeds generation has completed. You will need an API key to use for authenticating with the API. Please contact your Hawk Search Representative to request an API Key.
Staging Site:
http://staging.hawksearch.com/api/
Production Site:
http://api.hawksearch.info/api/v3
Please reference the Index method for additional details.
Feed Delivery Method
Hawk Search can accept the feeds using the delivery methods below.
FTP
Files can be hosted at an FTP location. You can host the files on your own FTP server and provide credentials to the Hawk Search team to access the account. Hawk Search supports both FTP and SFTP protocol and can download files from either server. If you do not have your own FTP server and need an account, ask your Hawk Search Representative to provide one.
Web Accessible URL:
Files can also be hosted on a directory on your server. Please provide the Hawk Search Team the path to the files so these can be appropriately downloaded from the server. If you have the path protected please provide the Hawk Search Team credentials for the same.
Other Questions?
For questions about the data feeds that Hawk Search can accept, please contact: sales@hawksearch.com