What is the IOF standard?

Internet Offer Format (IOF) is the first standard created by practitioners for the exchange of information on products in XML format, available under license of Creative Commons. Providing an original format for describing the product offer in e-commerce is the basis, among others of solutions such as Internet Cross-docking and Dropshipping Format (ICDF) or the Internet Marketplace Format (IMF) , but it can also be used in any other way.

Benefits of using the open IOF format

The IOF format that allows you to manage the most necessary information about products and their migration between any IT systems is supported in every store in the IdoSell and enables:

Bulk downloading and exporting products from various warehouses using the web import, updating and restoring products from the backup copy or the supporting application Downloader,
Generating data in an efficient and incremental way, saving the server's resources while ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of information relevant for sales, such as the product price or its available quantity,
Full exchange of information regarding the offered products, combined with Internet Cross-docking and Drop-shipping Format (ICDF) also information about dropshipping orders from cooperating stores. Both formats, applied together, complement each other for perfect and full communication of wholesalers and online stores,
Creating integration using the Internet Marketplace Format (IMF) between a store or wholesaler, and any marketplace,
Preparation of a product offer from a store or warehouse, which can be further used as:

• product feed in integration with another IdoSell,
• product feed in integration with any other IT system,
• as a source file for own comparison sites and their XSLT drivers,
• as an additional product backup.

If you are a developer, do not wait, implement the IOF format today

If you are a developer and work on creating a mechanism to share a product offer from your system, whether to upload offers from other suppliers to it, or you offer your own system comparing products prices or marketplace, we encourage you to use the IOF standard, thanks to which:

• You will provide your customers with access to, among others such characteristics of the offered products as:
  • product type,
  • category,
  • producer,
  • price: gross, net, suggested retail price, strikethrough retail price,
  • description: name, short description, long description,
  • photos,
  • icons,
  • parameters and sections,
  • warranty,
  • sizes,
  • series,
  • weight
  • units of measure,
  • group,
  • sets and collections with their components
  • attachments.
• You will provide reference collections of all sizes, categories, producers, series, units of measurement, warranties, parameters or warehouses used,
• You will be able to meet the needs of the most demanding partners with the ability to use IOF Extensions tags.

At the same time:

• You will multiply the savings of the used transfer and processing power of your server through proper service
  • the expiration date of the main gateway.xml file,
  • actual dates of generating individual format files (full.xml, full_change.xml, light.xml, sizes.xml, series.xml, warranties.xml, categories.xml, producers.xml, parameters.xml, stocks.xml),
  • the logic of determining changes and incremental generating of differential files full_change.xml containing information about recently changed nodes of offered products.
  • checksums for photos and icons of products,
• You will get instant access to the market of several thousand large IdoSell online stores in Poland and abroad,
• You will not have to create plugins for Open Source software, with which "there is always a problem",
• "You do not discover the wheel anew", meaning every programmer will be able to implement support for this standard.

To prepare the offer of your store, warehouse or other service in order to make it available to your recipients, start by:

• reading the Internet Offer Format (IOF) documentation and documentation for its extension IOF Extensions,
• get acquainted with the mechanism of incremental generation of IOF offers made available in IdoSell.

If you have any questions or would like us to include your suggestions regarding further development of the format, please contact us.

Choose a convenient way of integration using IOF

The IOF format due to its versatility can be used for a variety of applications:

• If you are a supplier (wholesaler) or you want your IdoSell to deliver offers to others, prepare the appropriate components of the IOF format while at the same time learning about the structure of IOF files and with the methods offered by IdoSell for offering offers for IdoSell online stores and the ability to personalize them for a specific client.

• If you are a seller (offer recipient), prepare a mechanism ensuring that all files in the IOF format are properly processed, while getting acquainted with the possibilities of the tools available for importing, updating and restoring products from a backup and the supporting application Downloader.

• If you run any marketplace, prepare your website to enable integration based on the IMF standard using the IOF standard and API Marketplace and report it to us and we will then add a ready integration to the IdoSell administration panel.

• If you run a service comparing products prices or you want to integrate your IdoSell store with any price comparison site or affiliate program, familiarize yourself with the Internet Offer Format (IOF) documentation and with the ways of sharing any product feed offered by IdoSell.

IOF format documentation

Full format documentation can be found at: Internet Offer Format Documentation (IOF)