Configuration file format -- Attributes

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Alphabetical list of attributes

accents_db
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy, htsearch
default:
${database_base}.accents.db
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
The database file used for the fuzzy "accents" search algorithm. This database is created by htfuzzy and used by htsearch.
example:
accents_db: ${database_base}.uml.db
add_anchors_to_excerpt
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
true
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
If set to true, the first occurrence of each matched word in the excerpt will be linked to the closest anchor in the document. This only has effect if the EXCERPT variable is used in the output template and the excerpt is actually going to be displayed.
example:
add_anchors_to_excerpt: no
allow_in_form
type:
string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
Allows the specified config file attributes to be specified in search forms as separate fields. This could be used to allow form writers to design their own headers and footers and specify them in the search form. Another example would be to offer a menu of search_algorithms in the form.
  <SELECT NAME="search_algorithm">
  <OPTION VALUE="exact:1 prefix:0.6 synonyms:0.5 endings:0.1" SELECTED>fuzzy
  <OPTION VALUE="exact:1">exact
  </SELECT>
example:
allow_in_form: search_algorithm search_results_header
allow_numbers
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
If set to true, numbers are considered words. This means that searches can be done on number as well as regular words. All the same rules apply to numbers as to words. See the description of valid_punctuation for the rules used to determine what a word is.
example:
allow_numbers: true
allow_virtual_hosts
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
true
block:
Global
version:
3.0.8b2 or later
description:
If set to true, htdig will index virtual web sites as expected. If false, all URL host names will be normalized into whatever the DNS server claims the IP address to map to. If this option is set to false, there is no way to index either "soft" or "hard" virtual web sites.
example:
allow_virtual_hosts: false
any_keywords
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b2 or later
description:
If set to true, the words in the keywords input parameter in the search form will be joined with logical ORs rather than ANDs, so that any of the words provided will do. Note that this has nothing to do with limiting the search to words in META keywords tags. See the search form documentation for details on this.
example:
any_keywords: yes
authorization
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
This tells htdig to send the supplied username:password with each HTTP request. The credentials will be encoded using the "Basic" authentication scheme. There must be a colon (:) between the username and password.
This attribute can also be specified on htdig's command line using the -u option, and will be blotted out so it won't show up in a process listing. If you use it directly in a configuration file, be sure to protect it so it is readable only by you, and do not use that same configuration file for htsearch.
example:
authorization: myusername:mypassword
backlink_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
1000
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This is a weight of "how important" a page is, based on the number of URLs pointing to it. It's actually multiplied by the ratio of the incoming URLs (backlinks) and outgoing URLs (links on the page), to balance out pages with lots of links to pages that link back to them. The ratio gives lower weight to "link farms", which often have many links to them. This factor can be changed without changing the database in any way. However, setting this value to something other than 0 incurs a slowdown on search results.
example:
backlink_factor: 501.1
bad_extensions
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
.wav .gz .z .sit .au .zip .tar .hqx .exe .com .gif .jpg .jpeg .aiff .class .map .ram .tgz .bin .rpm .mpg .mov .avi
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is a list of extensions on URLs which are considered non-parsable. This list is used mainly to supplement the MIME-types that the HTTP server provides with documents. Some HTTP servers do not have a correct list of MIME-types and so can advertise certain documents as text while they are some binary format. If the list is empty, then all extensions are acceptable, provided they pass other criteria for acceptance or rejection. See also valid_extensions.
example:
bad_extensions: .foo .bar .bad
bad_querystr
type:
pattern list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This is a list of CGI query strings to be excluded from indexing. This can be used in conjunction with CGI-generated portions of a website to control which pages are indexed.
example:
bad_querystr: forum=private section=topsecret&passwd=required
bad_word_list
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htsearch
default:
${common_dir}/bad_words
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies a file which contains words which should be excluded when digging or searching. This list should include the most common words or other words that you don't want to be able to search on (things like sex or smut are examples of these.)
The file should contain one word per line. A sample bad words file is located in the contrib/examples directory.
example:
bad_word_list: ${common_dir}/badwords.txt
bin_dir
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htfuzzy, htmerge, htsearch
default:
BIN_DIR
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the directory in which the executables related to ht://Dig are installed. It is never used directly by any of the programs, but other attributes can be defined in terms of this one.

The default value of this attribute is determined at compile time.

example:
bin_dir: /usr/local/bin
build_select_lists
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This list allows you to define any htsearch input parameter as a select list for use in templates, provided you also define the corresponding name list attribute which enumerates all the choices to put in the list. It can be used for existing input parameters, as well as any you define using the allow_in_form attribute. The entries in this list each consist of an octuple, a set of eight strings defining the variables and how they are to be used to build a select list. The attribute can contain many of these octuples. The strings in the string list are merely taken eight at a time. For each octuple of strings specified in build_select_lists, the elements have the following meaning:
  1. the name of the template variable to be defined as a list
  2. the input parameter name that the select list will set
  3. the name of the user-defined attribute containing the name list
  4. the tuple size used in the name list above
  5. the index into a name list tuple for the value
  6. the index for the corresponding label on the selector
  7. the configuration attribute where the default value for this input parameter is defined
  8. the default label, if not an empty string, which will be used as the label for an additional list item for the current input parameter value if it doesn't match any value in the given list
See the select list documentation for more information on this attribute.
example:
build_select_lists: MATCH_LIST matchesperpage matches_per_page_list \
1 1 1 matches_per_page "Previous Amount" \
RESTRICT_LIST restrict restrict_names 2 1 2 restrict "" \
FORMAT_LIST format template_map 3 2 1 template_name ""
case_sensitive
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
true
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b2 or later
description:
This specifies whether ht://Dig should consider URLs case-sensitive or not. If your server is case-insensitive, you should probably set this to false.
example:
case_sensitive: false
collection_names
type:
string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b2 or later
description:
This is a list of config file names that are used for searching multiple databases. Simply put, htsearch will loop through the databases specified by each of these config files and present the result of the search on all of the databases. The corresponding config files are looked up in the config_dir directory. Each listed config file must exist, as well as the corresponding databases.
example:
collection_names: htdig_docs htdig_bugs
common_dir
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htfuzzy, htmerge, htsearch
default:
COMMON_DIR
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
Specifies the directory for files that will or can be shared among different search databases. The default value for this attribute is defined at compile time.
example:
common_dir: /tmp
common_url_parts
type:
string list
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htmerge, htsearch
default:
http:// http://www. ftp:// ftp://ftp. /pub/ .html .htm .gif .jpg .jpeg /index.html /index.htm .com/ .com mailto:
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
Sub-strings often found in URLs stored in the database. These are replaced in the database by an internal space-saving encoding. If a string specified in url_part_aliases, overlaps any string in common_url_parts, the common_url_parts string is ignored.
Note that when this attribute is changed, the database should be rebuilt, unless the effect of "changing" the affected URLs in the database is wanted.
example:
common_url_parts: http://www.htdig.org/ml/ \
.html \
http://dev.htdig.org/ \
http://www.htdig.org/
compression_level
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
0
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
If specified and the zlib compression library was available when compiled, this attribute controls the amount of compression used in the doc_excerpt file.
example:
compression_level: 6
config_dir
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htfuzzy, htmerge, htsearch
default:
CONFIG_DIR
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the directory which contains all configuration files related to ht://Dig. It is never used directly by any of the programs, but other attributes or the include directive can be defined in terms of this one.

The default value of this attribute is determined at compile time.

example:
config_dir: /var/htdig/conf
create_image_list
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
If set to true, a file with all the image URLs that were seen will be created, one URL per line. This list will not be in any order and there will be lots of duplicates, so after htdig has completed, it should be piped through sort -u to get a unique list.
example:
create_image_list: yes
create_url_list
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
If set to true, a file with all the URLs that were seen will be created, one URL per line. This list will not be in any order and there will be lots of duplicates, so after htdig has completed, it should be piped through sort -u to get a unique list.
example:
create_url_list: yes
database_base
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htfuzzy, htmerge, htsearch
default:
${database_dir}/db
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the common prefix for files that are specific to a search database. Many different attributes use this prefix to specify filenames. Several search databases can share the same directory by just changing this value for each of the databases.
example:
database_base: ${database_dir}/sales
database_dir
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htfuzzy, htmerge, htsearch
default:
DATABASE_DIR
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the directory which contains all database and other files related to ht://Dig. It is never used directly by any of the programs, but other attributes are defined in terms of this one.

The default value of this attribute is determined at compile time.

example:
database_dir: /var/htdig
date_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
0
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This factor, gives higher rankings to newer documents and lower rankings to older documents. Before setting this factor, it's advised to make sure your servers are returning accurate dates (check the dates returned in the long format). Additionally, setting this to a nonzero value incurs a small performance hit on searching.
example:
date_factor: 0.35
date_format
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.2 or later
description:
This format string determines the output format for modification dates of documents in the search results. It is interpreted by your system's strftime function. Please refer to your system's manual page for this function, for a description of available format codes. If this format string is empty, as it is by default, htsearch will pick a format itself. In this case, the iso_8601 attribute can be used to modify the appearance of the date.
example:
date_format: %Y-%m-%d
description_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
150
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b3 or later
description:
Plain old "descriptions" are the text of a link pointing to a document. This factor gives weight to the words of these descriptions of the document. Not surprisingly, these can be pretty accurate summaries of a document's content. See also title_factor or text_factor.
example:
description_factor: 350
doc_db
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch
default:
${database_base}.docdb
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This file will contain a Berkeley database of documents indexed by document number. It contains all the information gathered for each document, except the document excerpts which are stored in the doc_excerpt file.
example:
doc_db: ${database_base}documents.db
doc_excerpt
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch
default:
${database_base}.excerpts
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This file will contain a Berkeley database of document excerpts indexed by document number. It contains all the text gathered for each document, so this file can become rather large if max_head_length is set to a large value. The size can be reduced by setting the compression_level, if supported on your system.
example:
doc_excerpt: ${database_base}excerpts.db
doc_index
type:
string
used by:
htmerge, htdig
default:
${database_base}.docs.index
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This file will contain a Berkeley database which maps document URLs to document numbers. It is basically an intermediate database from URLs to the document database.
example:
doc_index: documents.index.db
doc_list
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
${database_base}.docs
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This file is basically a text version of the file specified in doc_db. Its only use is to have a human readable database of all documents. The file is easy to parse with tools like perl or tcl.
example:
doc_list: /tmp/documents.text
end_ellipses
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
<strong><code> ...</code></strong>
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
When excerpts are displayed in the search output, this string will be appended to the excerpt if there is text following the text displayed. This is just a visual reminder to the user that the excerpt is only part of the complete document.
example:
end_ellipses: ...
end_highlight
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
</strong>
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
When excerpts are displayed in the search output, matched words will be highlighted using start_highlight and this string. You should ensure that highlighting tags are balanced, that is, this string should close any formatting tag opened by start_highlight.
example:
end_highlight: </font>
endings_affix_file
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy
default:
${common_dir}/english.aff
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
Specifies the location of the file which contains the affix rules used to create the endings search algorithm databases. Consult the documentation on htfuzzy for more information on the format of this file.
example:
endings_affix_file: /var/htdig/affix_rules
endings_dictionary
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy
default:
${common_dir}/english.0
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
Specifies the location of the file which contains the dictionary used to create the endings search algorithm databases. Consult the documentation on htfuzzy for more information on the format of this file.
example:
endings_dictionary: /var/htdig/dictionary
endings_root2word_db
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy, htsearch
default:
${common_dir}/root2word.db
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This attributes specifies the database filename to be used in the 'endings' fuzzy search algorithm. The database maps word roots to all legal words with that root. For more information about this and other fuzzy search algorithms, consult the htfuzzy documentation.
Note that the default value uses the common_dir attribute instead of the database_dir attribute. This is because this database can be shared with different search databases.
example:
endings_root2word_db: /var/htdig/r2w.db
endings_word2root_db
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy, htsearch
default:
${common_dir}/word2root.db
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This attributes specifies the database filename to be used in the 'endings' fuzzy search algorithm. The database maps words to their root. For more information about this and other fuzzy search algorithms, consult the htfuzzy documentation.
Note that the default value uses the common_dir attribute instead of the database_dir attribute. This is because this database can be shared with different search databases.
example:
endings_word2root_db: /var/htdig/w2r.bm
excerpt_length
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
300
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the maximum number of characters the displayed excerpt will be limited to. The first matched word will be highlighted in the middle of the excerpt so that there is some surrounding context.
The start_ellipses and end_ellipses are used to indicate that the document contains text before and after the displayed excerpt respectively. The start_highlight and end_highlight are used to specify what formatting tags are used to highlight matched words.
example:
excerpt_length: 500
excerpt_show_top
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
If set to true, the excerpt of a match will always show the top of the matching document. If it is false (the default), the excerpt will attempt to show the part of the document that actually contains one of the words.
example:
excerpt_show_top: yes
exclude_urls
type:
pattern list
used by:
htdig
default:
/cgi-bin/ .cgi
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
If a URL contains any of the space separated patterns, it will be rejected. This is used to exclude such common things such as an infinite virtual web-tree which start with cgi-bin.
example:
exclude_urls: students.html cgi-bin
external_parsers
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0.7 or later
description:
This attribute is used to specify a list of content-type/parsers that are to be used to parse documents that cannot by parsed by any of the internal parsers. The list of external parsers is examined before the builtin parsers are checked, so this can be used to override the internal behavior without recompiling htdig.
The external parsers are specified as pairs of strings. The first string of each pair is the content-type that the parser can handle while the second string of each pair is the path to the external parsing program. If quoted, it may contain parameters, separated by spaces.
External parsing can also be done with external converters, which convert one content-type to another. To do this, instead of just specifying a single content-type as the first string of a pair, you specify two types, in the form type1->type2, as a single string with no spaces. The second string will define an external converter rather than an external parser, to convert the first type to the second. If the second type is user-defined, then it's up to the converter script to put out a "Content-Type: type" header followed by a blank line, to indicate to htdig what type it should expect for the output, much like what a CGI script would do. The resulting content-type must be one that htdig can parse, either internally, or with another external parser or converter.
Only one external parser or converter can be specified for any given content-type. There are two internal parsers, for text/html and text/plain.

The parser program takes four command-line parameters, not counting any parameters already given in the command string:
infile content-type URL configuration-file
Parameter Description Example
infile A temporary file with the contents to be parsed. /var/tmp/htdext.14242
content-type The MIME-type of the contents. text/html
URL The URL of the contents. http://www.htdig.org/attrs.html
configuration-file The configuration-file in effect. /etc/htdig/htdig.conf

The external parser is to write information for htdig on its standard output. Unless it is an external converter, which will output a document of a different content-type, then its output must follow the format described here.
The output consists of records, each record terminated with a newline. Each record is a series of (unless expressively allowed to be empty) non-empty tab-separated fields. The first field is a single character that specifies the record type. The rest of the fields are determined by the record type.
Record type Fields Description
w word A word that was found in the document.
location A number indicating the normalized location of the word within the document. The number has to fall in the range 0-1000 where 0 means the top of the document.
heading level A heading level that is used to compute the weight of the word depending on its context in the document itself. The level is in the range of 0-10 and are defined as follows:
0
Normal text
1
Title text
2
Heading 1 text
3
Heading 2 text
4
Heading 3 text
5
Heading 4 text
6
Heading 5 text
7
Heading 6 text
8
unused
9
unused
10
Keywords
u document URL A hyperlink to another document that is referenced by the current document. It must be complete and non-relative, using the URL parameter to resolve any relative references found in the document.
hyperlink description For HTML documents, this would be the text between the <a href...> and </a> tags.
t title The title of the document
h head The top of the document itself. This is used to build the excerpt. This should only contain normal ASCII text
a anchor The label that identifies an anchor that can be used as a target in an URL. This really only makes sense for HTML documents.
i image URL An URL that points at an image that is part of the document.
m http-equiv The HTTP-EQUIV attribute of a META tag. May be empty.
name The NAME attribute of this META tag. May be empty.
contents The CONTENTS attribute of this META tag. May be empty.

See also FAQ questions 4.8 and 4.9 for more examples.

example:
external_parsers: text/html /usr/local/bin/htmlparser \
application/pdf /usr/local/bin/parse_doc.pl \
application/msword->text/plain "/usr/local/bin/mswordtotxt -w" \
application/x-gunzip->user-defined /usr/local/bin/ungzipper
external_protocols
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This attribute is a bit like external_parsers since it specifies a list of protocols/handlers that are used to download documents that cannot be retrieved using the internal methods. This enables htdig to index documents with URL schemes it does not understand, or to use more advanced authentication for the documents it is retrieving. This list is checked before HTTP or other methods, so this can override the internal behavior without writing additional code for htdig.
The external protocols are specified as pairs of strings, the first being the URL scheme that the script can handle while the second is the path to the script itself. If the second is quoted, then additional command-line arguments may be given.
The program takes three command-line parameters, not counting any parameters already given in the command string:
protocol URL configuration-file
Parameter Description Example
protocol The URL scheme to be used. https
URL The URL to be retrieved. https://www.htdig.org:8008/attrs.html
configuration-file The configuration-file in effect. /etc/htdig/htdig.conf

The external protocol script is to write information for htdig on the standard output. The output must follow the form described here. The output consists of a header followed by a blank line, followed by the contents of the document. Each record in the header is terminated with a newline. Each record is a series of (unless expressively allowed to be empty) non-empty tab-separated fields. The first field is a single character that specifies the record type. The rest of the fields are determined by the record type.
Record type Fields Description
s status code An HTTP-style status code, e.g. 200, 404. Typical codes include:
200
Successful retrieval
304
Not modified (for example, if the document hasn't changed)
301
Redirect (to another URL)
401
Not authorized
404
Not found
r reason A text string describing the status code, e.g "Redirect" or "Not Found."
m status code The modification time of this document. While the code is fairly flexible about the time/date formats it accepts, it is recommended to use something standard, like RFC1123: Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT, or ISO-8601: 1994-11-06 08:49:37 GMT.
t content-type A valid MIME type for the document, like text/html or text/plain.
l content-length The length of the document on the server, which may not necessarily be the length of the buffer returned.
u url The URL of the document, or in the case of a redirect, the URL that should be indexed as a result of the redirect.

example:
external_protocols: https /usr/local/bin/handler.pl \
ftp /usr/local/bin/ftp-handler.pl
extra_word_characters
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.2 or later
description:
These characters are considered part of a word. In contrast to the characters in the valid_punctuation attribute, they are treated just like letter characters.
Note that the locale attribute is normally used to configure which characters constitute letter characters.
example:
extra_word_characters: _
head_before_get
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This option works only if we take advantage of persistent connections (see persistent_connections attribute). If set to true an HTTP/1.1 HEAD call is made in order to retrieve header information about a document. If the status code and the content-type returned let the document be parsable, then a following 'GET' call is made.
example:
head_before_get: true
heading_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
5
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This is a factor which will be used to multiply the weight of words between <h1> and </h1> tags, as well as headings of levels <h2> through <h6>. It is used to assign the level of importance to headings. Setting a factor to 0 will cause words in these headings to be ignored. The number may be a floating point number. See also the title_factor and text_factor attributes.
example:
heading_factor: 20
htnotify_sender
type:
string
used by:
htnotify
default:
webmaster@www
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies the email address that htnotify email messages get sent out from. The address is forged using /usr/lib/sendmail. Check htnotify/htnotify.cc for detail on how this is done.
example:
htnotify_sender: bigboss@yourcompany.com
http_proxy
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
When this attribute is set, all HTTP document retrievals will be done using the HTTP-PROXY protocol. The URL specified in this attribute points to the host and port where the proxy server resides.
The use of a proxy server greatly improves performance of the indexing process.
example:
http_proxy: http://proxy.bigbucks.com:3128
http_proxy_exclude
type:
pattern list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b3 or later
description:
When this is set, URLs matching this will not use the proxy. This is useful when you have a mixture of sites near to the digging server and far away.
example:
http_proxy_exclude: http://intranet.foo.com/
image_list
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
${database_base}.images
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the file that a list of image URLs gets written to by htdig when the create_image_list is set to true. As image URLs are seen, they are just appended to this file, so after htdig finishes it is probably a good idea to run sort -u on the file to eliminate duplicates from the file.
example:
image_list: allimages
image_url_prefix
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
IMAGE_URL_PREFIX
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies the directory portion of the URL used to display star images. This attribute isn't directly used by htsearch, but is used in the default URL for the star_image and star_blank attributes, and other attributes may be defined in terms of this one.

The default value of this attribute is determined at compile time.

example:
image_url_prefix: /images/htdig
include
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htfuzzy, htmerge, htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This is not quite a configuration attribute, but rather a directive. It can be used within one configuration file to include the definitions of another file. The last definition of an attribute is the one that applies, so after including a file, any of its definitions can be overridden with subsequent definitions. This can be useful when setting up many configurations that are mostly the same, so all the common attributes can be maintained in a single configuration file. The include directives can be nested, but watch out for nesting loops.
example:
include: ${config_dir}/htdig.conf
iso_8601
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch, htnotify
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b2 or later
description:
This sets whether dates should be output in ISO 8601 format. For example, this was written on: 1998-10-31 11:28:13 EST. See also the date_format attribute, which can override any date format that htsearch picks by default.
This attribute also affects the format of the date htnotify expects to find in a htdig-notification-date field.
example:
iso_8601: true
keywords_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
100
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is a factor which will be used to multiply the weight of words in the list of keywords of a document. The number may be a floating point number. See also the title_factor and text_factorattributes.
example:
keywords_factor: 12
keywords_meta_tag_names
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
keywords htdig-keywords
block:
Global
version:
3.0.6 or later
description:
The words in this list are used to search for keywords in HTML META tags. This list can contain any number of strings that each will be seen as the name for whatever keyword convention is used.
The META tags have the following format:
  <META name="somename" content="somevalue">
example:
keywords_meta_tag_names: keywords description
limit_normalized
type:
pattern list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b2 or later
description:
This specifies a set of patterns that all URLs have to match against in order for them to be included in the search. Unlike the limit_urls_to directive, this is done after the URL is normalized and the server_aliases directive is applied. This allows filtering after any hostnames and DNS aliases are resolved. Otherwise, this directive is the same as the limit_urls_to directive.
example:
limit_normalized: http://www.mydomain.com
limit_urls_to
type:
pattern list
used by:
htdig
default:
${start_url}
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies a set of patterns that all URLs have to match against in order for them to be included in the search. Any number of strings can be specified, separated by spaces. If multiple patterns are given, at least one of the patterns has to match the URL.
Matching, by default, is a case-insensitive string match on the URL to be used, unless the case_sensitive attribute is set. The match will be performed after the relative references have been converted to a valid URL. This means that the URL will always start with http://.
Granted, this is not the perfect way of doing this, but it is simple enough and it covers most cases.
example:
limit_urls_to: .sdsu.edu kpbs [.*\.html]
local_default_doc
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
index.html
block:
Global
version:
3.0.8b2 or later
description:
Set this to the default documents in a directory used by the server. This is used for local filesystem access to translate URLs like http://foo.com/ into something like /home/foo.com/index.html
The list should only contain names that the local server recognizes as default documents for directory URLs, as defined by the DirectoryIndex setting in Apache's srm.conf, for example. As of version 3.1.5, this can be a string list rather than a single name, and htdig will use the first name that works. Since this requires a loop, setting the most common name first will improve performance. Special characters can be embedded in these names using %xx hex encoding.
example:
local_default_doc: default.html default.htm index.html index.htm
local_urls
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0.8b2 or later
description:
Set this to tell ht://Dig to access certain URLs through local filesystems. At first ht://Dig will try to access pages with URLs matching the patterns through the filesystems specified. If it cannot find the file, or if it doesn't recognize the file name extension, it will try the URL through HTTP instead. Note the example--the equal sign and the final slashes in both the URL and the directory path are critical.
The fallback to HTTP can be disabled by setting the local_urls_only attribute to true. To access user directory URLs through the local filesystem, set local_user_urls. The only file name extensions currently recognized for local filesystem access are .html, .htm, .txt, .asc, .ps, .eps and .pdf. For anything else, htdig must ask the HTTP server for the file, so it can determine the MIME content-type of it. As of version 3.1.5, you can provide multiple mappings of a given URL to different directories, and htdig will use the first mapping that works. Special characters can be embedded in these names using %xx hex encoding. For example, you can use %3D to embed an "=" sign in an URL pattern.
example:
local_urls: http://www.foo.com/=/usr/www/htdocs/
local_urls_only
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
Set this to tell ht://Dig to access files only through the local filesystem, for URLs matching the patterns in the local_urls or local_user_urls attribute. If it cannot find the file, it will give up rather than trying HTTP or another protocol.
example:
local_urls_only: true
local_user_urls
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0.8b2 or later
description:
Set this to access user directory URLs through the local filesystem. If you leave the "path" portion out, it will look up the user's home directory in /etc/password (or NIS or whatever). As with local_urls, if the files are not found, ht://Dig will try with HTTP or the appropriate protocol. Again, note the example's format. To map http://www.my.org/~joe/foo/bar.html to /home/joe/www/foo/bar.html, try the example below.
The fallback to HTTP can be disabled by setting the local_urls_only attribute to true. As of version 3.1.5, you can provide multiple mappings of a given URL to different directories, and htdig will use the first mapping that works. Special characters can be embedded in these names using %xx hex encoding. For example, you can use %3D to embed an "=" sign in an URL pattern.
example:
local_user_urls: http://www.my.org/=/home/,/www/
locale
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
C
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
Set this to whatever locale you want your search database cover. It affects the way international characters are dealt with. On most systems a list of legal locales can be found in /usr/lib/locale. Also check the setlocale(3C) man page.
example:
locale: en_US
logging
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b2 or later
description:
This sets whether htsearch should use the syslog() to log search requests. If set, this will log requests with a default level of LOG_INFO and a facility of LOG_LOCAL5. For details on redirecting the log into a separate file or other actions, see the syslog.conf(5) man page. To set the level and facility used in logging, change LOG_LEVEL and LOG_FACILITY in the include/htconfig.h file before compiling.
Each line logged by htsearch contains the following:
REMOTE_ADDR [config] (match_method) [words] [logicalWords] (matches/matches_per_page) - page, HTTP_REFERER
where any of the above are null or empty, it either puts in '-' or 'default' (for config).
example:
logging: true
maintainer
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
bogus@unconfigured.htdig.user
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This should be the email address of the person in charge of the digging operation. This string is added to the user-agent: field when the digger sends a request to a server.
example:
maintainer: ben.dover@uptight.com
match_method
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
and
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This is the default method for matching that htsearch uses. The valid choices are:
  • or
  • and
  • boolean
This attribute will only be used if the HTML form that calls htsearch didn't have the method value set.
example:
match_method: boolean
matches_per_page
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
10
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
If this is set to a relatively small number, the matches will be shown in pages instead of all at once.
example:
matches_per_page: 999
max_connection_requests
type:
integer
used by:
htdig
default:
-1
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This attribute tells htdig to limit the number of requests it will send to a server using a single, persistent HTTP connection. This only applies when the persistent_connections attribute is set. You may set the limit as high as you want, but it must be at least 1. A value of -1 specifies no limit. Requests in the queue for a server will be combined until either the limit is reached, or the queue is empty.
example:
max_connection_requests: 100
max_description_length
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
60
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
While gathering descriptions of URLs, htdig will only record those descriptions which are shorter than this length. This is used mostly to deal with broken HTML. (If a hyperlink is not terminated with a </a> the description will go on until the end of the document.)
example:
max_description_length: 40
max_descriptions
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
5
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
While gathering descriptions of URLs, htdig will only record up to this number of descriptions, in the order in which it encounters them. This is used to prevent the database entry for a document from growing out of control if the document has a huge number of links to it.
example:
max_descriptions: 15
max_doc_size
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
100000
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This is the upper limit to the amount of data retrieved for documents. This is mainly used to prevent unreasonable memory consumption since each document will be read into memory by htdig.
example:
max_doc_size: 5000000
max_head_length
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
512
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
For each document retrieved, the top of the document is stored. This attribute determines the size of this block. The text that will be stored is only the text; no markup is stored.
We found that storing 50,000 bytes will store about 95% of all the documents completely. This really depends on how much storage is available and how much you want to show.
example:
max_head_length: 50000
max_hop_count
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
999999
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
Instead of limiting the indexing process by URL pattern, it can also be limited by the number of hops or clicks a document is removed from the starting URL.
The starting page or pages will have hop count 0.
example:
max_hop_count: 4
max_keywords
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
-1
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This attribute can be used to limit the number of keywords per document that htdig will accept from meta keywords tags. A value of -1 or less means no limit. This can help combat meta keyword spamming, by limiting the amount of keywords that will be indexed, but it will not completely prevent irrelevant matches in a search if the first few keywords in an offending document are not relevant to its contents.
example:
max_keywords: 10
max_meta_description_length
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
512
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b1 or later
description:
While gathering descriptions from meta description tags, htdig will only store up to this much of the text for each document.
example:
max_meta_description_length: 1000
max_prefix_matches
type:
integer
used by:
htsearch
default:
1000
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b1 or later
description:
The Prefix fuzzy algorithm could potentially match a very large number of words. This value limits the number of words each prefix can match. Note that this does not limit the number of documents that are matched in any way.
example:
max_prefix_matches: 100
max_retries
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
3
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This option set the maximum number of retries when retrieving a document fails (mainly for reasons of connection).
example:
max_retries: 6
max_stars
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
4
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
When stars are used to display the score of a match, this value determines the maximum number of stars that can be displayed.
example:
max_stars: 6
maximum_pages
type:
integer
used by:
htsearch
default:
10
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This value limits the number of page links that will be included in the page list at the bottom of the search results page. As of version 3.1.4, this will limit the total number of matching documents that are shown.
example:
maximum_pages: 20
maximum_word_length
type:
number
used by:
htdig, htsearch
default:
32
block:
Global
version:
3.1.3 or later
description:
This sets the maximum length of words that will be indexed. Words longer than this value will be silently truncated when put into the index, or searched in the index.
example:
maximum_word_length: 15
meta_description_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
50
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b1 or later
description:
This is a factor which will be used to multiply the weight of words in any META description tags in a document. The number may be a floating point number. See also the title_factor and text_factor attributes.
example:
meta_description_factor: 20
metaphone_db
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy, htsearch
default:
${database_base}.metaphone.db
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
The database file used for the fuzzy "metaphone" search algorithm. This database is created by htfuzzy and used by htsearch.
example:
metaphone_db: ${database_base}.mp.db
method_names
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
and All or Any boolean Boolean
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
These values are used to create the method menu. It consists of pairs. The first element of each pair is one of the known methods, the second element is the text that will be shown in the menu for that method. This text needs to be quoted if it contains spaces. See the select list documentation for more information on how this attribute is used.
example:
method_names: or Or and And
mime_types
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
${config_dir}/mime.types
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This file is used by htdig for local file access and resolving file:// URLs to ensure the files are parsable. If you are running a webserver with its own MIME file, you should set this attribute to point to that file.
example:
mime_types: /etc/mime.types
minimum_prefix_length
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
1
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b1 or later
description:
This sets the minimum length of prefix matches used by the "prefix" fuzzy matching algorithm. Words shorter than this will not be used in prefix matching.
example:
minimum_prefix_length: 2
minimum_speling_length
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
5
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This sets the minimum length of words used by the "speling" fuzzy matching algorithm. Words shorter than this will not be used in this fuzzy matching.
example:
minimum_speling_length: 3
minimum_word_length
type:
number
used by:
htdig, htsearch
default:
3
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This sets the minimum length of words that will be indexed. Words shorter than this value will be silently ignored but still put into the excerpt.
Note that by making this value less than 3, a lot more words that are very frequent will be indexed. It might be advisable to add some of these to the bad_words list.
example:
minimum_word_length: 2
next_page_text
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
[next]
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
The text displayed in the hyperlink to go to the next page of matches.
example:
next_page_text: <img src="/htdig/buttonr.gif">
no_excerpt_show_top
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b3 or later
description:
If no excerpt is available, this option will act the same as excerpt_show_top, that is, it will show the top of the document.
example:
no_excerpt_show_top: yes
no_excerpt_text
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
<em>(None of the search words were found in the top of this document.)</em>
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This text will be displayed in place of the excerpt if there is no excerpt available. If this attribute is set to nothing (blank), the excerpt label will not be displayed in this case.
example:
no_excerpt_text:
no_next_page_text
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
[next]
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
The text displayed where there would normally be a hyperlink to go to the next page of matches.
example:
no_next_page_text:
no_page_list_header
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This text will be used as the value of the PAGEHEADER variable, for use in templates or the search_results_footer file, when all search results fit on a single page.
example:
no_page_list_header: <hr noshade size=2>All results on this page.<br>
no_page_number_text
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
The text strings in this list will be used when putting together the PAGELIST variable, for use in templates or the search_results_footer file, when search results fit on more than page. The PAGELIST is the list of links at the bottom of the search results page. There should be as many strings in the list as there are pages allowed by the maximum_pages attribute. If there are not enough, or the list is empty, the page numbers alone will be used as the text for the links. An entry from this list is used for the current page, as the current page is shown in the page list without a hypertext link, while entries from the page_number_text list are used for the links to other pages. The text strings can contain HTML tags to highlight page numbers or embed images. The strings need to be quoted if they contain spaces.
example:
no_page_number_text: <strong>1</strong> <strong>2</strong> \
<strong>3</strong> <strong>4</strong> \
<strong>5</strong> <strong>6</strong> \
<strong>7</strong> <strong>8</strong> \
<strong>9</strong> <strong>10</strong>
no_prev_page_text
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
[prev]
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
The text displayed where there would normally be a hyperlink to go to the previous page of matches.
example:
no_prev_page_text:
no_title_text
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
filename
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This specifies the text to use in search results when no title is found in the document itself. If it is set to filename, htsearch will use the name of the file itself, enclosed in brackets (e.g. [index.html]).
example:
no_title_text: "No Title Found"
noindex_end
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
<!--/htdig_noindex-->
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This string marks the end of a section of an HTML file that should be completely ignored when indexing. It works together with noindex_start. As in the defaults, this can be SGML comment declarations that can be inserted anywhere in the documents to exclude different sections from being indexed. However, existing tags can also be used; this is especially useful to exclude some sections from being indexed where the files to be indexed can not be edited. The example shows how SCRIPT sections in 'uneditable' documents can be skipped. Note that the match for this string is case insensitive.
example:
noindex_end: </SCRIPT>
noindex_start
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
<!--htdig_noindex-->
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This string marks the start of a section of an HTML file that should be completely ignored when indexing. It works together with noindex_end. As in the defaults, this can be SGML comment declarations that can be inserted anywhere in the documents to exclude different sections from being indexed. However, existing tags can also be used; this is especially useful to exclude some sections from being indexed where the files to be indexed can not be edited. The example shows how SCRIPT sections in 'uneditable' documents can be skipped; note how noindex_start does not contain an ending >: this allows for all SCRIPT tags to be matched regardless of attributes defined (different types or languages). Note that the match for this string is case insensitive.
example:
noindex_start: <SCRIPT
nothing_found_file
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
${common_dir}/nomatch.html
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies the file which contains the HTML text to display when no matches were found. The file should contain a complete HTML document.
Note that this attribute could also be defined in terms of database_base to make is specific to the current search database.
example:
nothing_found_file: /www/searching/nothing.html
nph
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b2 or later
description:
This attribute determines whether htsearch sends out full HTTP headers as required for an NPH (non-parsed header) CGI. Some servers assume CGIs will act in this fashion, for example MS IIS. If your server does not send out full HTTP headers, you should set this to true.
example:
nph: true
page_list_header
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
<hr noshade size=2>Pages:<br>
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This text will be used as the value of the PAGEHEADER variable, for use in templates or the search_results_footer file, when all search results fit on more than one page.
example:
page_list_header:
page_number_separator
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
" "
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
The text strings in this list will be used when putting together the PAGELIST variable, for use in templates or the search_results_footer file, when search results fit on more than page. The PAGELIST is the list of links at the bottom of the search results page. The strings in the list will be used in rotation, and will separate individual entries taken from page_number_text and no_page_number_text. There can be as many or as few strings in the list as you like. If there are not enough for the number of pages listed, it goes back to the start of the list. If the list is empty, a space is used. The text strings can contain HTML tags. The strings need to be quoted if they contain spaces, or to specify an empty string.
example:
page_number_separator: "</td> <td>"
page_number_text
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
The text strings in this list will be used when putting together the PAGELIST variable, for use in templates or the search_results_footer file, when search results fit on more than page. The PAGELIST is the list of links at the bottom of the search results page. There should be as many strings in the list as there are pages allowed by the maximum_pages attribute. If there are not enough, or the list is empty, the page numbers alone will be used as the text for the links. Entries from this list are used for the links to other pages, while an entry from the no_page_number_text list is used for the current page, as the current page is shown in the page list without a hypertext link. The text strings can contain HTML tags to highlight page numbers or embed images. The strings need to be quoted if they contain spaces.
example:
page_number_text: <em>1</em> <em>2</em> \
<em>3</em> <em>4</em> \
<em>5</em> <em>6</em> \
<em>7</em> <em>8</em> \
<em>9</em> <em>10</em>
persistent_connections
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
true
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
If set to true, when servers make it possible, htdig can take advantage of persistent connections, as defined by HTTP/1.1 (RFC2616). This permits to reduce the number of open/close operations of connections, when retrieving a document with HTTP.
example:
persistent_connections: false
plural_suffix
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
s
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b2 or later
description:
Specifies the value of the PLURAL_MATCHES template variable used in the header, footer and template files. This can be used for localization for non-English languages where 's' is not the appropriate suffix.
example:
plural_suffix: en
prefix_match_character
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
*
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b1 or later
description:
A null prefix character means that prefix matching should be applied to every search word. Otherwise a match is returned only if the word does not end in the characters specified.
example:
prefix_match_character: ing
prev_page_text
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
[prev]
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
The text displayed in the hyperlink to go to the previous page of matches.
example:
prev_page_text: <img src="/htdig/buttonl.gif">
regex_max_words
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
25
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
The "regex" fuzzy algorithm could potentially match a very large number of words. This value limits the number of words each regular expression can match. Note that this does not limit the number of documents that are matched in any way.
example:
regex_max_words: 10
remove_bad_urls
type:
boolean
used by:
htmerge
default:
true
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
If TRUE, htmerge will remove any URLs which were marked as unreachable by htdig from the database. If FALSE, it will not do this. When htdig is run in initial mode, documents which were referred to but could not be accessed should probably be removed, and hence this option should then be set to TRUE, however, if htdig is run to update the database, this may cause documents on a server which is temporarily unavailable to be removed. This is probably NOT what was intended, so hence this option should be set to FALSE in that case.
example:
remove_bad_urls: true
remove_default_doc
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
index.html
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
Set this to the default documents in a directory used by the servers you are indexing. These document names will be stripped off of URLs when they are normalized, if one of these names appears after the final slash, to translate URLs like http://foo.com/index.html into http://foo.com/
Note that you can disable stripping of these names during normalization by setting the list to an empty string. The list should only contain names that all servers you index recognize as default documents for directory URLs, as defined by the DirectoryIndex setting in Apache's srm.conf, for example.
example:
remove_default_doc: default.html default.htm index.html index.htm
remove_unretrieved_urls
type:
boolean
used by:
htmerge
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
If TRUE, htmerge will remove any URLs which were discovered and included as stubs in the database but not yet retrieved. If FALSE, it will not do this. When htdig is run in initial mode with no restrictions on hopcount or maximum documents, these should probably be removed and set to true. However, if you are hoping to index a small set of documents and eventually get to the rest, you should probably leave this as false.
example:
remove_unretrieved_urls: true
robotstxt_name
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
htdig
block:
Global
version:
3.0.7 or later
description:
Sets the name that htdig will look for when parsing robots.txt files. This can be used to make htdig appear as a different spider than ht://Dig. Useful to distinguish between a private and a global index.
example:
robotstxt_name: myhtdig
script_name
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
Overrides the value of the SCRIPT_NAME environment attribute. This is useful if htsearch is not being called directly as a CGI program, but indirectly from within a dynamic .shtml page using SSI directives. Previously, you needed a wrapper script to do this, but this configuration attribute makes wrapper scripts obsolete for SSI and possibly for other server scripting languages, as well. (You still need a wrapper script when using PHP, though.)
Check out the contrib/scriptname directory for a small example. Note that this attribute also affects the value of the CGI variable used in htsearch templates.
example:
script_name: /search/results.shtml
search_algorithm
type:
string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
exact:1
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
Specifies the search algorithms and their weight to use when searching. Each entry in the list consists of the algorithm name, followed by a colon (:) followed by a weight multiplier. The multiplier is a floating point number between 0 and 1. If the exact method is not listed, the search may not work since the original terms will not be used. Current algorithms supported are:
exact
The default exact word matching algorithm. This will find only exactly matched words.
soundex
Uses a slightly modified soundex algorithm to match words. This requires that the soundex database be present. It is generated with the htfuzzy program.
metaphone
Uses the metaphone algorithm for matching words. This algorithm is more specific to the english language than soundex. It requires the metaphone database, which is generated with the htfuzzy program.
accents
Uses the accents algorithm for matching words. This algorithm will treat all accented letters as equivalent to their unaccented counterparts. It requires the accents database, which is generated with the htfuzzy program.
endings
This algorithm uses language specific word endings to find matches. Each word is first reduced to its word root and then all known legal endings are used for the matching. This algorithm uses two databases which are generated with htfuzzy.
synonyms
Performs a dictionary lookup on all the words. This algorithm uses a database generated with the htfuzzy program.
substring
Matches all words containing the queries as substrings. Since this requires checking every word in the database, this can really slow down searches considerably.
prefix
Matches all words beginning with the query strings. Uses the option prefix_match_character to decide whether a query requires prefix matching. For example "abc*" would perform prefix matching on "abc" since * is the default prefix_match_character.
regex
Matches all words that match the patterns given as regular expressions. Since this requires checking every word in the database, this can really slow down searches considerably.
speling
A simple fuzzy algorithm that tries to find one-off spelling mistakes, such as transposition of two letters or an extra character. Since this usually generates just a few possibilities, it is relatively quick.
example:
search_algorithm: exact:1 soundex:0.3
search_results_footer
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
${common_dir}/footer.html
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies a filename to be output at the end of search results. While outputting the footer, some variables will be expanded. Variables use the same syntax as the Bourne shell. If there is a variable VAR, the following will all be recognized:
  • $VAR
  • $(VAR)
  • ${VAR}
The following variables are available:
MATCHES
The number of documents that were matched.
PLURAL_MATCHES
If MATCHES is not 1, this will be the string "s", else it is an empty string. This can be used to say something like "$(MATCHES) document$(PLURAL_MATCHES) were found"
MAX_STARS
The value of the max_stars attribute.
LOGICAL_WORDS
A string of the search words with either "and" or "or" between the words, depending on the type of search.
WORDS
A string of the search words with spaces in between.
PAGEHEADER
This expands to either the value of the page_list_header or no_page_list_header attribute depending on how many pages there are.
Note that this file will NOT be output if no matches were found. In this case the nothing_found_file attribute is used instead. Also, this file will not be output if it is overridden by defining the search_results_wrapper attribute.
example:
search_results_footer: /usr/local/etc/ht/end-stuff.html
search_results_header
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
${common_dir}/header.html
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies a filename to be output at the start of search results. While outputting the header, some variables will be expanded. Variables use the same syntax as the Bourne shell. If there is a variable VAR, the following will all be recognized:
  • $VAR
  • $(VAR)
  • ${VAR}
The following variables are available:
MATCHES
The number of documents that were matched.
PLURAL_MATCHES
If MATCHES is not 1, this will be the string "s", else it is an empty string. This can be used to say something like "$(MATCHES) document$(PLURAL_MATCHES) were found"
MAX_STARS
The value of the max_stars attribute.
LOGICAL_WORDS
A string of the search words with either "and" or "or" between the words, depending on the type of search.
WORDS
A string of the search words with spaces in between.
Note that this file will NOT be output if no matches were found. In this case the nothing_found_file attribute is used instead. Also, this file will not be output if it is overridden by defining the search_results_wrapper attribute.
example:
search_results_header: /usr/local/etc/ht/start-stuff.html
search_results_order
type:
string_list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b2 or later
description:
This specifies a list of patterns for URLs in search results. Results will be displayed in the specified order, with the search algorithm result as the second order. Remaining areas, that do not match any of the specified patterns, can be placed by using * as the pattern. If no * is specified, one will be implicitly placed at the end of the list.
See also url_seed_score.
example:
search_results_order: /docs/|faq.html * /maillist/ /testresults/
search_results_wrapper
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This specifies a filename to be output at the start and end of search results. This file replaces the search_results_header and search_results_footer files, with the contents of both in one file, and uses the pseudo-variable $(HTSEARCH_RESULTS) as a separator for the header and footer sections. If the filename is not specified, the file is unreadable, or the pseudo-variable above is not found, htsearch reverts to the separate header and footer files instead. While outputting the wrapper, some variables will be expanded, just as for the search_results_header and search_results_footer files.
Note that this file will NOT be output if no matches were found. In this case the nothing_found_file attribute is used instead.
example:
search_results_wrapper: ${common_dir}/wrapper.html
server_aliases
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b2 or later
description:
This directive tells the indexer that servers have several DNS aliases, which all point to the same machine and are NOT virtual hosts. This allows you to ensure pages are indexed only once on a given machine, despite the alias used in a URL.
example:
server_aliases: foo.mydomain.com:80=www.mydomain.com:80 \
bar.mydomain.com:80=www.mydomain.com:80
server_max_docs
type:
integer
used by:
htdig
default:
-1
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b3 or later
description:
This directive tells htdig to limit the dig to retrieve a maximum number of documents from each server. This can cause unusual behavior on update digs since the old URLs are stored alphabetically. Therefore, update digs will add additional URLs in pseudo-alphabetical order, up to the limit of the directive. However, it is most useful to partially index a server as the URLs of additional documents are entered into the database, marked as never retrieved.
A value of -1 specifies no limit.
example:
server_max_docs: 50
server_wait_time
type:
integer
used by:
htdig
default:
0
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b3 or later
description:
This directive tells htdig to ensure a server has had a delay (in seconds) from the beginning of the last connection. This can be used to prevent "server abuse" by digging without delay. It's recommended to set this to 10-30 (seconds) when indexing servers that you don't monitor yourself. Additionally, this directive can slow down local indexing if set, which may or may not be what you intended.
example:
server_wait_time: 20
sort
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
score
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
This is the default sorting method that htsearch uses to determine the order in which matches are displayed. The valid choices are:
  • score
  • time
  • title
  • revscore
  • revtime
  • revtitle
This attribute will only be used if the HTML form that calls htsearch didn't have the sort value set. The words date and revdate can be used instead of time and revtime, as both will sort by the time that the document was last modified, if this information is given by the server. The default is to sort by the score, which ranks documents by best match. The sort methods that begin with "rev" simply reverse the order of the sort. Note that setting this to something other than "score" will incur a slowdown in searches.
example:
sort: revtime
sort_names
type:
quoted string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
score Score time Time title Title revscore 'Reverse Score' revtime 'Reverse Time' revtitle 'Reverse Title'
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
These values are used to create the sort menu. It consists of pairs. The first element of each pair is one of the known sort methods, the second element is the text that will be shown in the menu for that sort method. This text needs to be quoted if it contains spaces. See the select list documentation for more information on how this attribute is used.
example:
sort_names: score 'Best Match' time Newest title A-Z \
revscore 'Worst Match' revtime Oldest revtitle Z-A
soundex_db
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy, htsearch
default:
${database_base}.soundex.db
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
The database file used for the fuzzy "soundex" search algorithm. This database is created by htfuzzy and used by htsearch.
example:
soundex_db: ${database_base}.snd.db
star_blank
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
${image_url_prefix}/star_blank.gif
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies the URL to use to display a blank of the same size as the star defined in the star_image attribute or in the star_patterns attribute.
example:
star_blank: http://www.somewhere.org/icons/noelephant.gif
star_image
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
${image_url_prefix}/star.gif
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies the URL to use to display a star. This allows you to use some other icon instead of a star. (We like the star...)
The display of stars can be turned on or off with the use_star_image attribute and the maximum number of stars that can be displayed is determined by the max_stars attribute.
Even though the image can be changed, the ALT value for the image will always be a '*'.
example:
star_image: http://www.somewhere.org/icons/elephant.gif
star_patterns
type:
string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This attribute allows the star image to be changed depending on the URL or the match it is used for. This is mainly to make a visual distinction between matches on different web sites. The star image could be replaced with the logo of the company the match refers to.
It is advisable to keep all the images the same size in order to line things up properly in a short result listing.
The format is simple. It is a list of pairs. The first element of each pair is a pattern, the second element is a URL to the image for that pattern.
example:
star_patterns: http://www.sdsu.edu /sdsu.gif \
http://www.ucsd.edu /ucsd.gif
start_ellipses
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
<strong><code>... </code></strong>
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
When excerpts are displayed in the search output, this string will be prepended to the excerpt if there is text before the text displayed. This is just a visual reminder to the user that the excerpt is only part of the complete document.
example:
start_ellipses: ...
start_highlight
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
<strong>
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
When excerpts are displayed in the search output, matched words will be highlighted using this string and end_highlight. You should ensure that highlighting tags are balanced, that is, any formatting tags that this string opens should be closed by end_highlight.
example:
start_highlight: <font color="#FF0000">
start_url
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
http://www.htdig.org/
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the list of URLs that will be used to start a dig when there was no existing database. Note that multiple URLs can be given here.
example:
start_url: http://www.somewhere.org/alldata/index.html
substring_max_words
type:
integer
used by:
htsearch
default:
25
block:
Global
version:
3.0.8b1 or later
description:
The Substring fuzzy algorithm could potentially match a very large number of words. This value limits the number of words each substring pattern can match. Note that this does not limit the number of documents that are matched in any way.
example:
substring_max_words: 100
synonym_db
type:
string
used by:
htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
${common_dir}/synonyms.db
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
Points to the database that htfuzzy creates when the synonyms algorithm is used.
htsearch uses this to perform synonym dictionary lookups.
example:
synonym_db: ${database_base}.syn.db
synonym_dictionary
type:
string
used by:
htfuzzy
default:
${common_dir}/synonyms
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This points to a text file containing the synonym dictionary used for the synonyms search algorithm.
Each line of this file has at least two words. The first word is the word to replace, the rest of the words are synonyms for that word.
example:
synonym_dictionary: /usr/dict/synonyms
syntax_error_file
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
${common_dir}/syntax.html
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This points to the file which will be displayed if a boolean expression syntax error was found.
example:
syntax_error_file: ${common_dir}/synerror.html
tcp_max_retries
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
1
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This option set the maximum number of attempts when a connection timeouts. After all these retries, the connection attempt results .
example:
tcp_max_retries: 6
tcp_wait_time
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
5
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This attribute sets the wait time after a connection fails and the timeout is raised.
example:
No example provided
template_map
type:
string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
Long builtin-long builtin-long Short builtin-short builtin-short
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This maps match template names to internal names and template file names. It is a list of triplets. The first element in each triplet is the name that will be displayed in the FORMAT menu. The second element is the name used internally and the third element is a filename of the template to use.
There are two predefined templates, namely builtin-long and builtin-short. If the filename is one of those, they will be used instead.
More information about templates can be found in the htsearch documentation.
example:
template_map: Short short ${common_dir}/short.html \
Normal normal builtin-long \
Detailed detail ${common_dir}/detail.html
template_name
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
builtin-long
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
Specifies the default template if none is given by the search form. This needs to map to the template_map.
example:
template_name: long
template_patterns
type:
string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
This attribute allows the results template to be changed depending on the URL or the match it is used for. This is mainly to make a visual distinction between matches on different web sites. The results for each site could thus be shown in a style matching that site.
The format is simply a list of pairs. The first element of each pair is a pattern, the second element is the name of the template file for that pattern.
More information about templates can be found in the htsearch documentation.
Normally, when using this template selection method, you would disable user selection of templates via the format input parameter in search forms, as the two methods were not really designed to interact. Templates selected by URL patterns would override any user selection made in the form. If you want to use the two methods together, see the notes on combining them for an example of how to do this.
example:
template_patterns: http://www.sdsu.edu ${common_dir}/sdsu.html \
http://www.ucsd.edu ${common_dir}/ucsd.html
text_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
1
block:
Global
version:
3.0 or later
description:
This is a factor which will be used to multiply the weight of words that are not in any special part of a document. Setting a factor to 0 will cause normal words to be ignored. The number may be a floating point number. See also the heading_factor, title_factor, and keywords_factor attributes.
example:
text_factor: 0
timeout
type:
number
used by:
htdig
default:
30
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
Specifies the time the digger will wait to complete a network read. This is just a safeguard against unforeseen things like the all too common transformation from a network to a notwork.
The timeout is specified in seconds.
example:
timeout: 42
title_factor
type:
number
used by:
htsearch
default:
100
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is a factor which will be used to multiply the weight of words in the title of a document. Setting a factor to 0 will cause words in the title to be ignored. The number may be a floating point number. See also the heading_factor attribute.
example:
title_factor: 12
url_list
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
${database_base}.urls
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This file is only created if create_url_list is set to true. It will contain a list of all URLs that were seen.
example:
url_list: /tmp/urls
url_log
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
${database_base}.log
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
If htdig is run with the -l option and interrupted, it will write out its progress to this file. Note that if it has a large number of URLs to write, it may take some time to exit. This can especially happen when running update digs and the run is interrupted soon after beginning.
example:
url_log: /tmp/htdig.progress
url_part_aliases
type:
string list
used by:
htdig, htnotify, htmerge, htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0 or later
description:
A list of translations pairs from and to, used when accessing the database. If a part of an URL matches with the from-string of each pair, it will be translated into the to-string just before writing the URL to the database, and translated back just after reading it from the database.
This is primarily used to provide an easy way to rename parts of URLs for e.g. changing www.example.com/~htdig to www.htdig.org. Two different configuration files for digging and searching are then used, with url_part_aliases having different from strings, but identical to-strings.
See also common_url_parts.
Strings that are normally incorrect in URLs or very seldom used, should be used as to-strings, since extra storage will be used each time one is found as normal part of a URL. Translations will be performed with priority for the leftmost longest match. Each to-string must be unique and not be a part of any other to-string.
Note that when this attribute is changed, the database should be rebuilt, unless the effect of "moving" the affected URLs in the database is wanted, as described above.
example:
url_part_aliases: http://search.example.com/~htdig *site \
http://www.htdig.org/this/ *1 \
.html *2
url_part_aliases: http://www.htdig.org/ *site \
http://www.htdig.org/that/ *1 \
.htm *2
url_seed_score
type:
string list
used by:
htsearch
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b2 or later
description:
This is a list of pairs, pattern formula, used to weigh the score of hits, depending on the URL of the document.
The pattern part is a substring to match against the URL. Pipe ('|') characters can be used in the pattern to concatenate substrings for web-areas that have the same formula.
The formula describes a factor and a constant, by which the hit score is weighed. The factor part is multiplied to the original score, then the constant part is added.
The format of the formula is the factor part: "*N" optionally followed by comma and spaces, followed by the constant part : "+M", where the plus sign may be emitted for negative numbers. Either part is optional, but must come in this order.
The numbers N and M are floating point constants.
More straightforward is to think of the format as "newscore = oldscore*N+M", but with the "newscore = oldscore" part left out.
example:
url_seed_score: /mailinglist/ *.5-1e6
/docs/|/news/ *1.5
/testresults/ "*.7 -200"
/faq-area/ *2+10000
use_doc_date
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
If set to true, htdig will use META date tags in documents, overriding the modification date returned by the server. Any documents that do not have META date tags will retain the last modified date returned by the server or found on the local file system.
example:
use_doc_date: true
use_meta_description
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b1 or later
description:
If set to true, any META description tags will be used as excerpts by htsearch. Any documents that do not have META descriptions will retain their normal excerpts.
example:
use_meta_description: true
use_star_image
type:
boolean
used by:
htsearch
default:
true
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
If set to true, the star_image attribute is used to display upto max_stars images for each match.
example:
use_star_image: no
user_agent
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
htdig
block:
Global
version:
3.1.0b2 or later
description:
This allows customization of the user_agent: field sent when the digger requests a file from a server.
example:
user_agent: htdig-digger
valid_extensions
type:
string list
used by:
htdig
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.1.4 or later
description:
This is a list of extensions on URLs which are the only ones considered acceptable. This list is used to supplement the MIME-types that the HTTP server provides with documents. Some HTTP servers do not have a correct list of MIME-types and so can advertise certain documents as text while they are some binary format. If the list is empty, then all extensions are acceptable, provided they pass other criteria for acceptance or rejection. If the list is not empty, only documents with one of the extensions in the list are parsed. See also bad_extensions.
example:
valid_extensions: .html .htm .shtml
valid_punctuation
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htsearch
default:
.-_/!#$%^&'
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the set of characters which will be deleted from the document before determining what a word is. This means that if a document contains something like Andrew's the digger will see this as Andrews.
The same transformation is performed on the keywords the search engine gets.
See also the extra_word_characters attribute.
example:
valid_punctuation: -'
version
type:
string
used by:
htsearch
default:
VERSION
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This specifies the value of the VERSION variable which can be used in search templates. The default value of this attribute is determined at compile time, and will not normally be set in configuration files.
example:
version: 3.2.0
word_db
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch
default:
${database_base}.words.db
block:
Global
version:
all
description:
This is the main word database. It is an index of all the words to a list of documents that contain the words. This database can grow large pretty quickly.
example:
word_db: ${database_base}.allwords.db
word_dump
type:
string
used by:
htdig
default:
${database_base}.worddump
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This file is basically a text version of the file specified in word_db. Its only use is to have a human readable database of all words. The file is easy to parse with tools like perl or tcl.
example:
word_dump: /tmp/words.txt
wordlist_compress
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
true
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Enables or disables the default compression system for the indexer. This currently compresses the index by a factor of 8.
example:
wordlist_compress: true
wordlist_page_size
type:
number
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
0
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Size of pages used by Berkeley DB (DB used by the indexer)
example:
wordlist_page_size: 8192
wordlist_cache_size
type:
number
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
10000000
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Size of memory cache used by Berkeley DB (DB used by the indexer) IMPORTANT: It makes a *huge* difference. The rule is that the cache size should be at least 2% of the expected index size. The Berkeley DB file has 1% of internal pages that *must* be cached for good performances. Giving an additional 1% leaves room for caching leaf pages.
example:
wordlist_cache_size: 40000000
wordlist_compress_debug
type:
number
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
0
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Debuging value for the compression system for the indexer.
0 : none
1 : transparent autotest while compressing (small performance decrease)
2 : ------------------ big performance decrease
3 : verbose
example:
wordlist_compress_debug: 2
wordlist_wordkey_description
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
nfields: 4/Location 16 3/Flags 8 2/DocID 32 1/Word 0 0
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Internal key description: *not user configurable*
example:
No example provided
wordlist_wordkey_description_file
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
No default
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Internal key description file: *not user configurable*
example:
No example provided
wordlist_wordrecord_description
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
DATA
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Internal data description: *not user configurable*
example:
No example provided
wordlist_monitor
type:
boolean
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
false
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
This enables monitoring of what's happening in the indexer. It can help to detect performance/configuration problems.
example:
wordlist_monitor: true
wordlist_monitor_period
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
1.0
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Sets the number of seconnds between each monitor output
example:
wordlist_monitor_period: .1
wordlist_monitor_fields
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
totput put/s cmpr/s ucmpr/s put_time cmpr_ucmpr_time
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Sets what values you want to monitor in the indexer. Here is a list of the currently available fields:
Compression related:
mxtreelevel : maximal depth of compressed/uncompressed pages (db tree grow bottom up...)
cmpr/s : number of pages compressed per second
ucmpr/s : number of pages uncompressed per second
cmpr_ucmpr_time : proportion of total time spent compressing/uncompressing pages
nonleave/leave : proportion of pages compressed/uncompressed pages that weren't tree leaves
cmpr_ratio : average atained compression ration
cmpr_overflow : proportion of pages that didn't fit in the specified compression ratio
Others:
totput : total number of entries inserted into the index
put/s : number of inserts per second
put_time : proportion of total time spent inserting
nwalks/s : number of walks per second
walk_time : proportion of total time spent walking
nwalk_set : number of walk jumps
nwalk_set/s : number of walk jumps per second
nwalk_next : number of walk next's
nwalk_next/s : number of walk next's per second
example:
wordlist_monitor_fields: put/s nwalks/s
wordlist_monitor_output
type:
string
used by:
htdig, htmerge, htsearch, htfuzzy
default:
1.0
block:
Global
version:
3.2.0b1 or later
description:
Specifies word monitor output. Currently file or stdout
example:
wordlist_monitor_output: file:/home/bosc/trash/wlmonout
Last modified: Mon Apr 10 22:05:23 CDT 2000
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