tep 1: Launch Aspire and open the Content Source Management Page



Aspire 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.

Step 2: Add a new RSS Content Source

To specify what RSS feeds 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 "RSS Connector".

Step 2a: Specify Basic Information



General Configuration Tab

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, Periodically, Daily, 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 2b: Specify the Connector Information



Connector Configuration Tab

In the "Connector" tab, specify the connection information to crawl the RSS.

  1. Enter the URLs of all the feeds you wish to crawl

    http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml?edition=uk Click add to add another input box for further feeds

  2. If you want the url of the feed you entered to be indexed as well, check the Index feed option

Advance Properties (optional)



Advance Properties

This section shows how to configure the advance properties of the connector. Also you can check Connector Properties for more info

  • Snapshots Directory
  1. Directory where snapshots will be placed.
  • Text Extraction
  1. Enable Text Extraction: Extract text of the files using tika.


Step 2c: Specify Workflow Information



Workflow Configuration Tab

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.

Step 3: Initiate the Full Crawl

Now that everything is set up, actually initiating the crawl is easy.

  1. From the Aspire Admin page (http://localhost:50505/aspire/files/home.html), you can see the new RSS connector.
  2. Make sure connector is active and click on the crawl type.

    Content Source have crawl type buttons such as Full, Incremental and Test

  3. After click on the type crawl button it will display a pop up to get confirmation regarding removing already indexed data. Please click on the OK button by accepting it. Initiating a Full Crawl will remove any previously-indexed information (incremental snapshots) and re-index the source from scratch. Initiating a Full Crawl will remove any previously-indexed information (incremental snapshots) and re-index the source from scratch.
  4. Now connector will crawl all the configured RSS feeds in turn (according to your configuration). It may take a minute or two for Aspire to connect to the content source and begin feeding the content.

Note that connector will be automatically initiated by the scheduler based on the schedule you specified for the connector, be it once a day, once a week, every hour, etc. But you can always start a crawl at any time by clicking on the "Crawl type" button.

Aspire 2.0 running content source

During the Crawl

During the crawl, you can do the following:

  1. 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.

  2. Click on "Complete" link on your connector to view the number of documents crawled so far, the number of documents submitted, and the number of documents with errors.



Aspire 2.0 content source statistics

If there are errors, you will get a clickable "Error" flag that will take you to a detailed error message page. Also you can consult the auditing tool for get more details about the crawl. For more information about the auditing tool look here

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