Configuration

Plugin settings

Settings → Plugins → Eat.

Setting	What it does
Feed directory	Where files are written, relative to the web root. An absolute path or a Craft alias works too. Environment variables are parsed.
Default brand	Fills `brand` when nothing else does. Google and Meta both require it. Defaults to the system name.
Image transform	A named transform applied to every feed image, unless a feed overrides it.
Generate in the queue	Leave on. A catalogue of any size takes longer than a control panel request should.
Schedule from web requests	For sites without cron: after a front-end request, queue anything due. Throttled to once a minute and guarded by a mutex.
Batch size	Products read from the database at a time. 100 is a sensible default; lower it on very wide catalogues.
Enable live feed routes	Whether `/eat/feed/<handle>` responds at all.
Live feed cache duration	How long a generated-on-request feed is cached when the feed has no schedule.
Runs to keep	Per feed. 0 keeps everything.

Feed setup

Channel decides the attribute vocabulary, which attributes are required, the file shape and the wording for things like availability. Format decides how those attributes are written: RSS 2.0, plain XML, CSV, TSV, tab-separated TXT or JSON. A channel only offers the formats it actually accepts.

Changing a saved feed's channel replaces its attribute map with the new channel's defaults, because g:image_link means nothing on Awin. Mappings you had customised for the old channel do not survive that switch — export the feed first if you want them back.

Site decides which products, URLs and prices are used. Store defaults to the site's store.

Rows decides what one row is:

One row per variant — what Google wants. Variants of the same product are tied together with item_group_id.
One row per product, default variant — for catalogues where variants are sizes nobody advertises separately.
One row per product, cheapest variant's price — "from $19.99" feeds.

Currency overrides the store's currency code in the output; it does not convert. Price multiplier multiplies every price — 1.2 to advertise a channel-specific markup.

Link tagging appends UTM parameters to every product URL, without clobbering parameters the URL already has.

Filters

Filters run before the attribute map, and every product they exclude is counted with a reason in the run log.

Filter	Notes
Product types	Leave everything unchecked to include every type.
Statuses	Live by default.
In stock only	Skips tracked variants with no stock. Consider leaving it off — most channels would rather have the product marked out of stock than missing.
Require an image	Skips products with no image anywhere.
Require a price	Skips anything priced at zero, which every channel rejects anyway.
Include disabled variants	Off by default.
Minimum / maximum price	Inclusive bounds.
Row limit	Useful while testing.
Exclude SKUs	One per line, `` allowed: `SAMPLE-`.
Exclude product IDs	One per line.

Pro adds Craft's own product condition builder on top, so anything Craft can match — a field value, a related element, a date — can decide what is in the feed.

Delivery

Mode	Notes
File	Written under the feed directory and served from a stable public URL.
Asset volume	Written into a Craft volume's filesystem, so S3 and friends work.
FTP / SFTP	Uploaded on every run. Use environment variables for credentials.
Google Merchant Center	Pushed with the Content API v2.1 in batches of 100.

The local file is written first in every mode, so the URL keeps working even when a remote destination is down, and you can look at exactly what was sent.

Gzip the file appends .gz and compresses it. Google, Meta and Microsoft all accept it, and a 40 MB feed becomes about 3 MB.

Serve a live URL makes /eat/feed/<handle> generate on request, cached for the feed's interval. Good for small catalogues and for channels that fetch rarely; a poor idea for 50,000 products.

Google Merchant Center credentials

In Google Cloud, create a service account and download its JSON key.
Give that service account access to your Merchant Center account (Settings → Users → Add user, using the service account's email).
Store the key outside the web root and point Service account credentials at the path, or put the JSON itself in an environment variable and use $MY_VAR.
Enter the Merchant Center account ID and press Test the connection.

Scheduling

Pick an interval on the Schedule tab, then run this from cron:

*/15 * * * * cd /path/to/site && php craft eat/feeds/generate --due

Without cron, leave Schedule from web requests on in the plugin settings. Pro feeds can also regenerate when a product is saved — queued and debounced, so resaving a whole section costs one job per feed rather than one per product.

Output options

Option	Applies to
Write a header row	CSV, TSV, TXT
CSV delimiter and enclosure	CSV
Skip incomplete products	Every format. Off means the channel rejects the row instead of Eat omitting it.
Batch size	Every format
Root element / item element	XML
JSON wrapper	JSON
Feed title / link / description	RSS