Connecting a Password-Protected Feed

Some shops don't publish their product feed openly — it sits behind a username and password so only authorised systems can read it. Renable supports that for both your main product feed and any auxiliary feed, and it works the same way for web feeds and SFTP.

Enter the credentials in the feed's source dialog. Don't put them in the feed URL.

Most feeds are public, so the dialog doesn't show a username and password by default. There are two ways to enter them when a feed needs one.

When Renable tells you the feed needs a sign-in#

The quickest path is to let the live preview find out for you:

1. Open your catalog and go to Data sources.
2. Click the feed you want to configure — your main product feed, or any auxiliary feed in the list.
3. Paste the Feed address as normal, without any credentials in it.
4. Renable tries to read the feed. If it needs a sign-in, a panel appears directly below the Feed address with Username and Password fields — the problem and the fix in one place.
5. Enter the username and password. As you type, Renable re-checks the feed on its own (you'll see a brief Checking… note on the password field while it does), so you can confirm they work before saving. Once they're accepted, the panel collapses to a "Signed in as …" line and your feed's columns and a couple of example rows appear in the preview below.
6. Click Save, then Publish when you're ready for the change to take effect.

Setting a sign-in up front#

If you already know a feed is private, you don't have to wait for the preview to ask:

1. Open the feed and expand Advanced.
2. Choose Add a username and password.
3. Fill in the fields, then Save and Publish as above.

Like every other feed setting, credentials are part of your unpublished changes until you publish. Nothing about your imports changes until then.

Checking and changing them later#

Once a feed is signed in, the dialog shows a "Signed in as …" line (noting that it's sent with every import) instead of the fields, so a public feed stays uncluttered and a private one shows at a glance that it's set up. Choose Change to edit the sign-in. The password is hidden behind dots — click the eye icon at the end of the field to reveal it, so you can check what's stored rather than retype it blind.

• To replace it, choose Change, then type the new one over the field.
• To remove it, choose Change, clear both the username and password fields, and save.

Restoring an earlier version of the catalog restores the credentials that version had, exactly like any other setting.

Why not put credentials in the URL?#

A URL of the form https://user:password@example.com/feed.xml does still work — Renable continues to accept it so existing catalogs keep importing. The separate fields are the better option because the URL is shown on screen in several places and appears in error messages when an import fails, so it's easy to share a screenshot or a support message that contains it without noticing.

If you open a feed that currently has credentials in its URL, Renable moves them into the proper fields for you and shows the URL cleaned up. Just save to complete the switch. The same happens if you paste a URL with credentials into a chat with Aimée.

Credentials are stored so that Renable can send them to your feed provider on every import, which means they're readable by anyone with access to your Renable account — treat them like any other shared account setting. If a feed provider can issue you a dedicated read-only credential for Renable, prefer that over your own login.

If the feed still won't load#

• The message says the feed needs a username and password. Renable reached the feed, but it's password-protected and nothing is saved for it. Add the username and password in the feed's source dialog (above), then save and publish.
• The message says the saved username and password were rejected. The credentials are there but the feed provider turned them down. Reveal the password with the eye icon and check it character by character, then try fetching the feed yourself in a browser or with a tool like curl. If your provider gave you a token rather than a username and password, put the token in whichever field they specify — some providers use the token as the username and leave the password empty.
• The message says the address returned a web page, not a product feed. A private feed's sign-in page is a web page too, so a wrong or expired link often shows up this way. Confirm you're using the direct feed link (not a link to a login screen or a product listing page), then re-check the username and password. See My feed import failed for the other things that produce this message.
• The password contains a colon or an @. That's fine in these fields. It's exactly the sort of thing that breaks when credentials are packed into a URL instead.
• The feed redirects somewhere else. Renable sends your credentials only to the host you entered. If the feed URL redirects to a different domain, the credentials aren't forwarded to it — for your protection. If the destination needs them, the fetch fails with an authorisation error; ask your provider for the direct URL.
• It's an SFTP feed. Use the same Username and Password fields; no other configuration is needed.

Asking Aimée#

Aimée can set a feed's URL, format, encoding, import time and its username and password. Ask her in plain language — "the feed needs a login now, the username is shopfeed and the password is …". For your main product feed she fetches it first, so the credentials are checked before they're saved to your draft; auxiliary-feed credentials are saved directly and checked by the preview and the next import.

She can also read what's already configured, so you never need to re-send a password just to confirm it. If you paste a URL that has credentials built into it, she'll split them out and store the URL clean, the same way the dialog does.