[jira] [Commented] (CONNECTORS-275) Clarify documentation as to how to set up session login for web connector

["Karl Wright (Commented) (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CONNECTORS-275?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13128319#comment-13128319 ] 

Karl Wright commented on CONNECTORS-275:
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It would be great to hear some clarification on why pages that obviously would be needed for a user to log into this site using a browser do not exist.  The Web Connector is designed to permit crawling only of sites that can be visited by a human being with a browser; it's not a generic HTTP API crawler by any stretch.

To answer specific questions about the connector itself:

bq. But it's not clear why there's TWO Regex's per entry. There's a "Login URL" regex, and also a "Form name/link target" regex.

The "Login URL" is to allow you to specify, via URL regular expression, which pages are part of the login page sequence.  The "Form name/link target" regexp, combined with the "page type" you mentioned, together determine what ManifoldCF regards as a fetch that is part of the login sequence, and one that is not.  As it says in the end-user documentation: "You declare a page to be a login page by identifying it both by its URL, and by what the crawler finds on the page when it fetches it. "

bq. For "rediection", am I saying "look for a redirect event", or am I saying "then DO a redirect to this page".

You are saying that a page fetch that matches the URL that is a redirection will be considered part of the login sequence, and is thus not indexable content.

bq. And for "form name", what if my login page doesn't have a named form? In the case of the site I'm trying to spider, when your session expires, you manually go back to an https page and supply your username and password as CGI parameters. I know this sounds odd, but it's apparently how a number of the sites we're trying to spider work, some proprietary software.

You can match a missing or blank form name with an empty regexp, or even more specifically "^$", which ONLY matches the empty string.

Hope this helps.

                
> Clarify documentation as to how to set up session login for web connector
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CONNECTORS-275
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CONNECTORS-275
>             Project: ManifoldCF
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: Documentation, Web connector
>    Affects Versions: ManifoldCF 0.4
>            Reporter: Karl Wright
>
> A book reader has this comment, which basically implies that we need to improve the documentation for the web connector:
> "I was excited to get the full version of the online book, but then disappointed when it referred back to the online doc for setting up logins for a Web spidering. The online doc is very vague and only gives one example. I've used Ultraseek's and Google's spider, but I still find the Session login sequences non-obvious.
> I've got a subscription request into the user mailing list, but here's the parts that are not clear.
> I generally understand about using regexes to define sites and sorting out content pages from login pages.
> But it's not clear why there's TWO Regex's per entry. There's a "Login URL" regex, and also a "Form name/link target" regex.
> It's also not clear about the "page type" radio button choices.
> For "rediection", am I saying "look for a redirect event", or am I saying "then DO a redirect to this page".
> And for "form name", what if my login page doesn't have a named form? In the case of the site I'm trying to spider, when your session expires, you manually go back to an https page and supply your username and password as CGI parameters. I know this sounds odd, but it's apparently how a number of the sites we're trying to spider work, some proprietary software.
> Karl, I really think the book or Wiki or doc needs 3 or 4 different examples of login scenarios.
> Here's the scenario I'm trying, if you'd like to use it:
> Try to fetch: http://site.com/product?id=1234
> If you get a redirect to: http://site.com/Main.asp
> Note that there's no login form nor link on this page.
> Then invoke this login URL: https://site.com/validate?username=me&password=that&otherArg=something
> Note that you can't just visit this page and fill in a form, that gives an error, it has to be passed in (I think as a GET)
> Then record the session cookie and try for /product?id=1234 again.
> I realize this is odd, I didn't design it. "

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