Categories feed

A Categories feed describes your category pages. It plays two roles:

Category pages become searchable results in their own right.
It is the lookup table that turns the category names on products and articles into real links — each <category> value on a product/article is matched against the hierarchy field here. Without a Categories source, those category names are still indexed but have no URL.

Structure

Root element: <categories>
Item element: <category> (zero or more)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<categories>
  <category>
    <name>OTC medicines</name>
    <url>https://shop.example.com/c/otc-medicines</url>
    <hierarchy>Pain &amp; fever | OTC medicines</hierarchy>
    <image_link_s>https://shop.example.com/img/otc-s.jpg</image_link_s>
    <image_link_m>https://shop.example.com/img/otc-m.jpg</image_link_m>
    <image_link_l>https://shop.example.com/img/otc-l.jpg</image_link_l>
  </category>
</categories>

DTD

<!ELEMENT categories (category*)>
<!ELEMENT category (name, url, hierarchy, image_link_s?, image_link_m?, image_link_l?)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT url (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT hierarchy (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT image_link_s (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT image_link_m (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT image_link_l (#PCDATA)>

Children must appear in the order shown above.

Elements

Element	Required	Type	Searched	Meaning
`name`	yes	text	yes	Display name of the category (e.g. `"OTC medicines"`). Full-text and prefix searchable.
`url`	yes	text	no	Link to the category page. This is the URL attached to products/articles whose category matches this entry's `hierarchy`.
`hierarchy`	yes	text	no	Full category path, used as the match key. Conventionally a `\|`-separated path from root to leaf (e.g. `"Pain & fever \| OTC medicines"`). A product/article `<category>` must contain this exact string to resolve to this entry's `url`.
`image_link_s`	no	text	no	Small image URL.
`image_link_m`	no	text	no	Medium image URL.
`image_link_l`	no	text	no	Large image URL.

Keep hierarchy consistent across feeds. The value a product or article puts in <category> must equal this hierarchy verbatim — including spacing and separators — or the link will not be resolved.