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This tutorial walks through the steps necessary to crawl a File System using the Aspire 2.0 Basic File System Connector.

Step 1: Set Folder Access Rights

In order to crawl the content of a folder, the user running Aspire requires read access to the folder.

Windows

  1. Open a Windows Explorer window.
  2. Navigate to the folder to be crawled.
  3. Right-click on the folder.
  4. Select Properties.
  5. Go to the Security tab.
  6. If the user doesn't already have permissions:
    1. Click Edit.
    2. Click Add...
    3. Enter the username.
    4. Under Permissions for Authenticated Users give the user at least Read permissions.
    5. Apply changes.

Linux:

  1. cd to the folder to be crawled.
  2. Add at least read permissions to the folder using chmod.

Step 2: Launch Aspire and open the Content Source Management Page

Launch Aspire (if it's not already running). See:

Browse to: http://localhost:50505. For details on using the Aspire Content Source Management page, please refer to UI Introduction.

Aspire Content Source Management Page

Step 3: Add a new File System Content Source

To specify exactly what File System folder to crawl, we will need to create a new "Content Source".

To create a new content source:

  1. From the Aspire 2 Home page, click on "Add Source" button.
  2. Click on "File System Connector".




Step 3a: Specify Basic Information

In the "General" tab in the Add New Content Source window, specify basic information for the content source:

  1. Enter a content source name in the "Name" field.

    This is any useful name which you decide is a good name for the source. It will be displayed in the content source page, in error messages, etc.

  2. Click on the "Active?" checkbox to add a checkmark.

    Unchecking the "Active?" option allows you to configure content sources but not have them enabled. This is useful if the folder will be under maintenance and no crawls are wanted during that period of time.

  3. Click on the "Schedule" drop-down list and select one of the following: Manually, PeriodicallyDaily, or Weekly.

    Aspire can automatically schedule content sources to be crawled on a set schedule, such as once a day, several times a week, or periodically (every N minutes or hours). For the purposes of this tutorial, you may want to select Manually and then set up a regular crawling schedule later.

  4. After selecting a Schedule type, specify the details, if applicable:
    1. Manually: No additional options.
    2. Periodically: Specify the "Run every:" options by entering the number of "hours" and "minutes."
    3. Daily: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options.
    4. Weekly: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options, then clicking on the day checkboxes to specify days of the week to run the crawl.
    5. Advance: Enter a custom CRON Expression (e.g. 0 0 0 ? * *)

Step 3b: Specify the Connector Information

In the "Connector" tab, specify the connection information to crawl the File System folder.

  1. Enter the folder path you want to crawl.

    For Windows: D:\folder\folder1\For Linux: /home/user/folder/folder1/

  2. Check the other options as needed:
    1. Index folders?: index subfolders as items. If unchecked, only files will be indexed.
    2. Scan subfolders?: Scan through subfolder's child nodes.
    3. Include/Exclude patterns: Enter regex patterns to include or exclude files/folders based on URL matches.





Step 3c: Specify Workflow Information

In the "Workflow" tab, specify the workflow steps for the jobs that come out of the crawl. Drag and drop rules to determine which steps should an item follow after being crawled. This rules could be where to publish the document or transformations needed on the data before sending it to a search engine. See Workflow for more information.

  1. For the purpose of this tutorial, drag and drop the Publish To File rule found under the Publishers tab to the onPublish Workflow tree.
    1. Specify a Name and Description for the Publisher.
    2. Click Add.

After completing this steps click on the Save button and you'll be sent back to the Home Page.

Add new source


General Configuration Tab






Connector Configuration Tab



Workflow Configuration Tab


Step 4: Initiate the Full Crawl

Now that the content source is set up, the crawl can be initiated.

  1. Click on the crawling type option to set it as "Full" (is set as "Incremental" by default and the first time it'll work like a full crawl. After the first crawl, set it to "Incremental" to crawl for any changes done in the repository).
  2. Click on the Start button.

During the Crawl

During the crawl, you can do the following:

  • Click on the "Refresh" button on the Content Sources page to view the latest status of the crawl.

    The status will show RUNNING while the crawl is going, and CRAWLED when it is finished.

  • Click on "Complete" to view the number of documents crawled so far, the number of documents submitted, and the number of documents with errors.

If there are errors, you will get a clickable "Error" flag that will take you to a detailed error message page.

Start Crawl


Crawl Statistics