This tutorial walks through the steps necessary to crawl web pages using the Heritrix connector. You may wish to read through the instructions first so that you can gather up the information needed to input the crawling parameters.

When crawling web pages, it is assumed that all content is public.


Step 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 Heritrix Content Source



Add new source

To specify exactly what Web Site(s) 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 "Heritrix Connector".

Step 3a: 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 3b: Specify the Connector Information



Connector Configuration Tab

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

  1. In the "Seed URL" field in the Heritrix Job Configuration File section, enter the seed list URLs to crawl, one per line, such as: http://www.searchtechnologies.com
  2. Click on the "Crawl Scope" drop-down list, then select one of the following options: All (default),Stay Within Domain, or Stay Within Host.
  3. In the "Max Hops" field, enter the maximum number of allowed hops the crawler should go when crawling linked pages (the default is 3).
  4. Leave all other Heritrix Job Configuration File section fields set to default for this tutorial.

Crawl Accept and Reject Patterns

You can use Java regular expressions to specifically include or exclude patterns to crawl. These are optional.

To add a new pattern:

  1. Click on the "Add New" link in the "Crawl accept patterns" or "Crawl reject patterns" section. The Pattern field appears in the section whose link was clicked.
  2. Enter the pattern expression.



Heritrix Crawl PropertiesIf you enter crawl patterns to accept or reject, the URL will be compared to the pattern and crawled or not crawled, as specified. For example, to exclude javascript files, you can set a reject crawl pattern of: "\.js$" (The defaults for crawling patterns are "none"; you can enter one pattern, multiple patterns, or no patterns.)

To remove a pattern, click on the X icon next to the Pattern field.

Index Accept and Reject Patterns

You can use Java regular expressions to specifically include or exclude patterns to index. These are optional.

To add a new pattern:

  1. Click on the "Add New" link in the "Index include patterns" or "Index exclude patterns" section. The Pattern field appears in the section whose link was clicked.
  2. Enter the pattern expression.



Heritrix Index PropertiesIf you enter index patterns to accept or reject, the URL will be compared to the pattern and indexed or not indexed, as specified. For example, the crawler may need to crawl a "robots.txt" file in order to read the rules on how to crawl a particular site, but you won't want to index that rules file. To exclude it, you would enter ".*robots.txt*." as a reject index pattern. (The defaults for indexing patterns are "none"; you can enter one pattern, multiple patterns, or no patterns.)

To remove a pattern, click on the X icon next to the Pattern field.


Step 3c: 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.



Step 3d: Optional NTLM setting

If you need to set up NTLM support it is done through a configuration file. Using a Custom Heritrix Configuration File


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

Step 4: Initiate the Full Crawl



Start Crawl

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

  1. Click on the crawl 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


Crawl Statistics

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