gen-catalog

View script Copied!

Generate SFCC catalog XML files for testing and development. Creates well-formed Demandware impex XML with base products, variants, and variant relationships -- useful for seeding sandbox environments, QA testing, or development data loads without hand-crafting XML.

The output is valid for upload via Business Manager or the SFCC OCAPI Data API.

Quick start

$ gen-catalog 2 3
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<catalog xmlns="http://www.demandware.com/xml/impex/catalog/2006-10-31"
         xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace"
         catalog-id="test-catalog">
    <header/>
    <product product-id="BASE1">
        <display-name xml:lang="en">BASE1</display-name>
        <variations>
            <variants>
                <variant product-id="BASE1-VAR-001" default="true"/>
                <variant product-id="BASE1-VAR-002"/>
                <variant product-id="BASE1-VAR-003"/>
            </variants>
        </variations>
    </product>
    <product product-id="BASE1-VAR-001">
        <display-name xml:lang="en">BASE1 Variant 001</display-name>
    </product>
    <product product-id="BASE1-VAR-002">
        <display-name xml:lang="en">BASE1 Variant 002</display-name>
    </product>
    ...
</catalog>

That creates 2 base products (BASE1, BASE2), each with 3 variants.

Common examples

Redirect to a file:

gen-catalog 10 5 > catalog.xml

Specify a custom catalog ID:

gen-catalog 3 2 my-sandbox-catalog

Generate a large test catalog for performance testing:

gen-catalog 1000 20 perf-test-catalog > large-catalog.xml

Catalog structure

Each base product contains a <variations> block listing its variant product IDs. Variant products are defined separately as standard <product> elements.

Product IDs follow this pattern:

Base: BASE1, BASE2, BASE3, ...
Variants: BASE1-VAR-001, BASE1-VAR-002, ...

The first variant of each base is marked default="true".

Display names are set to the product ID (for bases) or BASE# Variant ### (for variants). In practice you'd enrich these via subsequent XML loads or Business Manager edits.

Reference

All options

Flag	Description
`base_count`	Number of base products to generate (required, positive integer)
`variants_per_base`	Number of variants per base product (required, positive integer)
`catalog_id`	Catalog ID attribute in the XML (optional, defaults to `test-catalog`)
`-h, --help`	Show help message

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
2	Usage error (missing required args, non-numeric values, zero or negative counts)

Dependencies

None -- uses only bash builtins and standard Unix utilities.