Indexing and crawling a website with Solr
This page describes how to configure the Content Indexer submodule of the Magnolia Solr module to index Magnolia workspaces and crawl a website.
The Solr module allows you to use Apache Solr, a standalone enterprise-grade search server with a REST-like API, for indexing and crawling Magnolia content, especially if you need to manage assets in high volumes (100,000+ DAM assets).
Configuring Solr clients
From version 5.2, the Solr module supports multiple Solr servers/cores.
You can configure a client for every server/core under Configuration > /modules/solr-search-provider/config/solrClientConfigs. It’s recommended to have one client named default. This default client is used when no specific client is defined for the indexer, crawler, or search result page template.
If you need to have more servers/cores, duplicate the default client and change the baseURL property to point to another server/core.
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| Node name | Value |
|---|---|
solr-search-provider |
|
config |
|
solrClientConfigs |
|
default |
|
allowCompression |
false |
baseURL |
|
connectionTimeout |
100 |
soTimeout |
1,000 |
The value entered for the baseURL property should conform with the following syntax:
<protocol>://<domain_name>:<port>/solr/<solr_core_name>
If the Solr server is installed as described in Installing Apache Solr, then the value is http://localhost:8983/solr/magnolia. For a description of the other properties see the HttpSolrClient.Builder Javadoc and Using SolrJ - Common Configuration Options.
Indexing Magnolia workspaces
The Content Indexer module is a recursive repository indexer and an event based indexer. You can configure multiple indexers for different sites and document types. The content indexer also allows you to crawl external websites using JSoup and CSS selectors. You then define different field mappings that will be obtained for each node and indexed in the Solr index.
IndexService
Both the indexer and the crawler use the IndexService to handle the indexing of a content. A basic implementation is configured by default: info.magnolia.search.solrsearchprovider.logic.indexer.BasicSolrIndexService.
| You can define and configure your own IndexService for specific needs. |
Implement the IndexService interface:
public class I18nIndexerService implements info.magnolia.module.indexer.indexservices.IndexService {
private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(I18nIndexerService.class);
@Override
public boolean index(Node node, IndexerConfig config) {
// ...
}For a globally configured indexing service, register the IndexService in the configuration of the Content Indexer module. For your custom indexing service, use the indexServiceClass (see above in the properties table):
| Node name | Value |
|---|---|
modules |
|
content-indexer |
|
config |
|
indexServiceClass |
info.magnolia.search.solrsearchprovider.logic.indexer.BasicSolrIndexService |
Indexer configuration
You can configure an indexer in Configuration > /modules/content-indexer/config/indexers.
See an example configuration for indexing assets and folders in the DAM workspace or the below example configuration for indexing of content in the website workspace:
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| Node name | Value |
|---|---|
modules |
|
content-indexer |
|
config |
|
indexers |
|
websiteIndexer |
|
clients |
|
default |
default |
fieldMappings |
|
abstract |
abstract |
author |
author |
date |
date |
teaserAbstract |
mgnlmeta_teaserAbstract |
text |
content |
title |
title |
enabled |
false |
pull |
false |
rootNode |
/ |
type |
website |
workspace |
website |
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
|
required
|
|
required Indicates whether indexing was done. When Solr finishes indexing
content-indexer will set this property to |
|
optional, default is JCR node type to index.
For example, if you were indexing assets in the Magnolia DAM you would
set this to |
|
optional, default is Pull URLs instead of pushing. When |
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optional, default is `jcr` If |
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required Node in the workspace where indexing starts. Use this property to limit indexing to a particular site branch. |
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required Sets the type of the indexed content such as |
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required Workspace to index. |
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optional (Solr module version 5.2+) Custom IndexService used by this indexer. If not defined, the global one is used. |
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required Field mappings defines how fields in Magnolia content are mapped to Solr fields. Left side is Magnolia, right side is Solr. |
|
You can use the fields available in the schema. If a field does not
exist in Solr’s schema you can use a dynamic field |
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optional, default is `default` (Solr module version 5.2+) Solr clients which will be used by this indexer. Allows to index content for multiple instances of Solr. |
|
required Name of the client. |
Crawler configuration
The crawler mechanism uses the Scheduler to crawl a site periodically.
You can configure indexers in Configuration > /modules/content-indexer/config/crawlers.
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| Property | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
required
When a crawler is enabled
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required The max depth of a page in terms of distance in clicks from the root page. This should not be too high, ideally 2 or 3 max. |
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required The max number of simultaneous crawler threads that crawl a site. 2 or 3 is enough. |
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optional, default value is 5000 Maximum number of outgoing links which are processed from a page. |
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optional, default value is 200 Delay in milliseconds between sending two requests to the same host. |
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optional, default value is 20000 Socket timeout in milliseconds. |
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optional, default value is 30000 Connection timeout in milliseconds. |
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optional, default value is "crawler4j (https://github.com/yasserg/crawler4j/)" A User-Agent string used to represent your For more details, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent. |
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optional, since version 3.0, default value is info.magnolia.module.indexer.crawler.DefaultCrawler Implementation of |
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optional, since version 3.0, default value is content-indexer Name of the catalog where the command resides. |
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optional, since version 3.0, default value is crawlerIndexer Command which is used to instantiate and trigger the Crawler. |
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optional, since version 3.0 If it’s set to true then crawler should be triggered only during publication. No scheduler job will be registered for this crawler.
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optional, since version 3.0, default value is 5s Defines the delay (in seconds) after which crawler should start when activation is done. Default value is 5s. |
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optional, default is every hour `0 0 0/1 1/1 * ? *` A CRON expression that specifies how often the site will be crawled. CronMaker is a useful tool for building expressions. |
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optional Sets the type of the crawled content such as |
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optional, since version 5.2 Custom IndexService used by this crawler. If not defined, the global one is used. |
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optional, since version 5.2, default is Solr clients which will be used by this indexer. Allows index content into multiple Solr instances. |
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required Name of the client. |
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required Field mappings defines how fields parsed from the site pages are mapped to Solr fields. Left side is Solr field, right side is the crawled site. |
||
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required You can use any CSS
selector to target an element on the page. For example,
You can also use custom syntax to get content inside attributes. For
example, meta keywords are extracted using
|
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optional, since version 3.0 List of JCR items. If any of this items is activated crawler will be triggered. |
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optional, since version 3.0 Name of the JCR item. |
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required, since version 3.0 Workspace where JCR item is stored. |
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required, since version 3.0 Path of the JCR item. |
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optional, since version 5.0.2 Authentication information to allow crawling password restricted area. |
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required, since version 5.0.2 Username which is used for login into restricted area. |
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required, since version 5.0.2 User’s password used for login into restricted area. |
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required, since version 5.0.2 Url to page with login form. |
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required, since version 5.0.2, default value is mgnlUserID Name of input field for entering the username in login form. |
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required, since version 5.0.2, default value is mgnlUserPSWD Name of input field for entering the password in login form. |
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required, since version 5.0.2, default value is mgnlLogout String which identifies the logout Url. Crawler doesn’t crawl over the urls which contains logoutUrlIdentifier to avoid logout. |
Example: Configuration to crawl www.bbc.co.uk
| Node name | Value |
|---|---|
bbc_co_uk |
|
clients |
|
default |
default |
sites |
|
bbc |
|
url |
|
fieldMappings |
|
abstract |
#story_continues_1 |
keywords |
meta[name=Description] attr(0,content) |
depth |
2 |
enabled |
false |
nbrCrawlers |
2 |
type |
news |
Configuration of crawler commands
You can configure crawler commands in Configuration > /modules/content-indexer/commands/.
By default, the crawler mechanism is connected with the CleanSolrIndexCommand to clean the index from outdated indexes (pages). The CleanSolrIndexCommand is chained before the CrawlerIndexerCommand.
| Node name | Value |
|---|---|
modules |
|
content-indexer |
|
config |
|
indexers |
|
crawlers |
|
commands |
|
content-indexer |
Note: Name of the folder is referenced by the crawler catalog property. |
<crawler-name> |
Note: Name of the node is referenced by the crawler command property. |
cleanSolr |
|
class |
info.magnolia.search.solrsearchprovider.logic.commands.CleanSolrIndexCommand |
<crawler-name> |
|
class |
info.magnolia.module.indexer.crawler.commands.CrawlerIndexerCommand |
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
|
optional, since version 5.0.1, default value is 500 Maximum number of documents to be checked. |
|
optional, since version 5.5.1, default value is false If set to If the |
|
optional, since version 5.5.2, default value is false If set to |
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optional, since version 5.0.1 List of status codes. If a page returns any of the status codes listed, then the page will be removed from the index. By default, there is no list but if a page returns 404 at any time, the page is removed from the index. |
|
optional, since version 5.5.4, default value is false If set to |
|
optional, since version 5.5.1, default value is false If set to Normally, if the |
Crawling triggered by publishing
From version 3.0, crawlers can be also connected with the publishing (activation) process by adding info.magnolia.module.indexer.crawler.commands.CrawlerIndexerActivationCommand into command chain with publishing (activation) command. By default, this is done for these commands:
-
If you are using the Publishing module:
-
catalog: default, command: publish - configured under
/modules/publishing-core/commands/default/publish -
catalog: default, command: unpublish - configured under
/modules/publishing-core/commands/default/unpublish
-
-
catalog: default, command: personalizationActivation - configured under
/modules/personalization-integration/commands/default/personalizationActivation
If you are using a custom publishing (activation) command and you wish to connect it with the crawler mechanism, you can use info.magnolia.module.indexer.setup.AddCrawlerIntoCommandChainTask install/update task for it.
|
Creating a sitemap with Solr
To create a custom sitemap with Solr, please refer to the page called Generating Sitemap with SOLR - SOLR Module available on the Magnolia Community Wiki.