Welcome to the "Getting Started Tutorial"!

  • You will install Aspire, an Aspire connector application, and an Aspire publisher application (that simply writes to a file instead of to a search engine for indexing).
  • You'll get an idea of how to install Aspire applications using the System Admin UI (no programming knowledge needed).

If you wish to use Aspire simply as a componentized pipeline processing system (without the connector framework), please see the Aspire Framework Pages.

There are other tutorials for each type of connector application you might want to install; located under the section for each Connector.


Make sure that the Aspire version you download matches your tutorial version. The released binaries must match the training versions.

Prerequisites


1. Before you begin, you must be registered to use Aspire (go to http://aspire.searchtechnologies.com/) if you haven't already done that.

  • You will need your user registration name and password in order to complete this tutorial.

Review the Prerequisites to Connectors and Content Processing.


On this page:


2. You will also need to install MongoDB. See Installing and Configuring MongoDB 3.X for more details.

  • MongoDB is used to hold the crawl state for the Aspire Connector Framework.

Future releases (currently expected for 3.2) will allow for other databases to be used.



Step 1: Download with Pre-Built Binaries


You must be registered to access the binaries download page. Go to http://aspire.searchtechnologies.com to register.

A pre-built distribution of Aspire can be downloaded from https://wiki.searchtechnologies.com/binaries/

This distribution contains pre-built binaries for a functioning Aspire installation which works for both Windows and Linux.

After downloading Aspire, do the following:

  1. Extract the contents of the zip or tar file into a directory
  2. Edit and save the settings.xml file in the /Conf directory to change the default settings for username and password.


<remoteRepositories>
    <remoteRepository>
        <id>stPublic</id>
        <url>http://repository.searchtechnologies.com/artifactory/simple/community-public/</url>
        <user>YOUR ASPIRE ACCOUNT USERNAME</user>
        <password>YOUR PASSWORD</password>d>
    </remoteRepository>
</remoteRepositories>


    1. Open a command prompt and set your current directory to the directory where you put the Aspire Software
    2. Launch Aspire.
      Windows: bin\aspire.bat      Linux: bin\aspire.sh
    3. Go to http://localhost:50505 in a web browser to get started

See Launch Control for more details.


Step 3: Start MongoDB


  1. If you haven't installed MongoDB yet, do it now: Installing and Configuring MongoDB 3.X
  2. Make sure your MongoDB server is running by executing:
> mongo
MongoDB shell version: 3.2.4
connecting to: test
>

Error

If a "NETWORK  Failed to connect to 127.0.0.1:27017" error occurs, then it is not running.

Start it by executing:

For Windows:

Open a terminal and CD to your MongoDB installation folder and execute:

C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.2\bin> mongod

For Linux:

$ sudo service mongod start


Step 4: Edit the Aspire config/settings.xml file


  1. Go to the directory where you unpacked Aspire (such as "aspire-quick-start").
  2. Go to the configuration directory /config
  3. Open the settings.xml file with a text or XML editor. 
  4. Look for the maven repository tag. 
  5. You need to replace the username and password that displays with the username and password you used to register for Aspire.
<repositories>
    
	<defaultVersion>3.2</defaultVersion>
    
	<repository type="distribution">
		<directory>bundles/aspire</directory>
	</repository>

	<repository type="maven">
		<remoteRepositories>
			<remoteRepository>
				<id>stPublic</id>
				<url>http://repository.searchtechnologies.com/artifactory/public/</url>
				<user>YOUR-REGISTERED-USERNAME</user>
				<password>YOUR-REGISTERED-PASSWORD</password>
			</remoteRepository>
		</remoteRepositories>
	</repository>
</repositories>

6. After you've entered your username and password, Save and close the file. Make sure you save it so it remains an .xml file!

7. Modify the following section and point to the server where you installed MongoDB. In this case, MongoDB is running in the host called mongodb-host:


Step 5: Start up Aspire


First, make sure you have access to the internet so that Aspire can download components.

To start Aspire, follow these steps:

  1. Open a terminal and cd to the bin/ directory inside the downloaded Aspire Distribution.
  2. Execute the startup script
  • Windows
> aspire.bat


  • Linux
$ aspire.sh


  • OS X (this command must be executed from Aspire home directory)
$ bin/aspire.sh

Error

If you are unable to start Aspire and an error occurs, try accessing a URL via the browser and logging in with your registered username/password. For example:



Step 6: Browse to the content source management page


  1. Browse to: http://localhost:50505 if you are running Aspire locally or change the host to the server hosting Aspire.

For details on using the Aspire Content Source Management page, please refer to Admin UI Audit Logs.


Step 7: Add a new content source


Step 7a: Add a New FileSystem Content Source

Add Source Menu

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 3 Home page, Add Source.
  2. Click File System Connector.


Step 7b: Specify Basic Information

General Configuration

In the General tab in the Content Source Configuration 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 Scheduled pull-down list and select one of the following: Manually, PeriodicallyDaily,Weekly or Advanced.
    • 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.
  3. Click on the Action pull-down list to select one of the following: Start, StopPause, or Resume.
    • This is the action that will be performed for that specific schedule.
  4. Click on the Crawl pull-down list and select one of the following: Incremental, FullReal Time, or Cache Groups.
    • This will be the type of crawl to execute for that specific schedule.

After selecting a Scheduled, specify the details, if applicable:

    • Manually: No additional options.
    • Periodically: Specify the "Run every:" options by entering the number of "hours" and "minutes."
    • Daily: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options.
    • 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.
    • Advanced: Enter a custom CRON Expression (e.g. 0 0 0 ? * *)

Step 7c: Specify the Connector Information

Connector Config

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: Use the following format D:\folder\folder1\ 
    • For Linux: Use the following format /home/user/folder/folder1/
  2. Check on the other options as needed:
    1. Index Containers?: Index containers as items. If unchecked, only files will be indexed.
    2. Scan Recursively?: Scan through subfolder's child nodes.
    3. Scan Excluded Item: It will scan sub items of container that have been excluded
    4. Include/Exclude patterns: Enter regex patterns to include or exclude files/folders based on URL matches.

Step 7d: Specify Workflow Information

Workflow

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. These 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 these steps, click Save and Done and you'll be sent back to the Home page.

You can add more schedules by clicking in the Add New option, and rearrange the order of the schedules.


If you want to disable the content source just clear the the Enable checkbox. This is useful if the folder will be under maintenance and no crawls are wanted during that period of time.


Real Time and Cache Groups crawl will be available depending of the connector.


Step 8: Initiate the full crawl


Content Source

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

  1. Click Full crawl (left most black circle) to initiate the crawl.

During the Crawl

Statistics

During the crawl, you can do the following:
  • Click Refresh 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 Complete to view the number of documents crawled so far, the number of documents submitted, and the number of documents with errors.

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


Step 9: Congratulate yourself! (and shutdown)


Congratulations!! You have completed the 20-minute quick start. We hope it was a fun experience.

Shutdown

  1. To shut down Aspire, go to the Debug Console page (http://localhost:50505/aspire).
  2. Click Shutdown (that's the red button to the right of the server name). 

Or, you could go to the Aspire console window (where you started Aspire with "bin\startup") and type shutdown and then press Return or Enter