Troubleshooting data feed errors

Find out how to troubleshoot some of the most common errors with data feeds.

ERROR: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found

Reason: The feed is no longer available on the URL that is in the system.

Resolution:

  1. Check your website is still live.
  2. If website is still live, either try to get a new feed URL or  check the URL,  it might be incorrect.
ERROR: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection. Parameter name: XXXX (e.g. Index)

Reason: The format of the feed has changed, they have moved either added new or removed a column(s) from the feed URL. For example this means the data in example column 10, which was once product price, is now product category.

Resolution:

  • Select reconfigure and remap the feed.
  • If error occurs during remap, view the feed URL and determine what data is missing due the changes that have made.
ERROR: The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.

The feed supplier are using a feed URL that has https:// at the start instead of http://. This means the SSL certificate of the Advertiser's website is invalid, expired, missing, misconfigured, not matching the domain or untrustworthy.

Resolution:

  1. Try taking “s” out of the URL and reconfiguring / uploading.
  2. Otherwise inform your/clients technical there is a problem with their SSL certificate and hence https is not working.
ERROR: The remote server returned an error: (503) Server Unavailable

Similar to the remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found, 503 means the server did not respond at call to the request, therefore the server is likely down or has a significant error.

Resolution:

  1. Try to get a new feed URL or check the URL is correct.
ERROR: For security reasons DTD is prohibited in this XML document. To enable DTD processing set the DtdProcessing property on XmlReaderSettings to Parse and pass the settings into XmlReader. Create method.

Error is due to Commission Factory's high level server security settings.

Resolution:

  1. Obtain an different feed URL if available from merchant.
ERROR: The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseHeader Detail=CR must be followed by LF

You are using a third party feed provider and their CDN is sending malformed data in the feed.

Resolution:

  1. Obtain an different feed URL if available from merchant.
ERROR: The operation has timed out

This can happen due to the following reasons:

  1. Delay in sending data to our system, due to the server building it on request instead of sending parts as it’s being built.  
  2. Data feed is very large in size
  3. Data feed download speed is slow and therefore causes our server to abandon the connection as the feed is going to take too long to download.

Resolution:

  1. Get a feed compressed  e.g. in .zip format.
  2. Supply a smaller feed of top-selling products instead of all products.
  3. Allow your server to build the feed in parts instead of entirely before allowing us to download.
ERROR: The remote name could not be resolved: 'www.mywebsite.com'

DNS server was down during download. Usually, a temporary problem and may be available at the next download.

Resolution:

  1. Try clicking the Update Now button when editing the feed. This should force the system to try again and will give you instant feedback as to whether the error is still current.
  2. If it is a regular problem, try to get another feed URL.
ERROR: Cannot create a file when that file already exists.

Please contact support@commissionfactory.com if you get this error. 

ERROR: Root element is missing.

The structure of the file has changed. It normally occurs with XML formatted feeds. The below in bold with a strikethrough would have changed name or is missing. Example:

<root>

<product></product>

<product></product>

</root>

Resolution:

  1. Select reconfigure and remap the feed. It is likely there is a new root name.
  2. If error occurs during remap, view the feed URL and determine if data is missing due the changes they have made.
  3. Lastly if there is no root element that means the structure of the XML feed is broken and you need to fix it.
ERROR: Unable to connect to the remote server

Temporary, server may have been down, rebooting or crashed or we attempted to retrieve the file during a maintenance period.

Resolution:

  1. Try clicking the Update Now button when editing feed. This should force the system to try again and will give you instant feedback as to whether the error is still current.
  2. If it is a regular problem, try and get another feed URL.