eRez Imaging Server 5.0
Working with the Searchable Index and Hot Folders
Table of contents
Working with the Searchable Index and Hot Folders
Forcing a complete rescan of one or more shared folders
eRez automatically monitors and index all shared folders marked for monitoring by means of with the “Monitor Files” checkbox in the Management Console.
The shared folders are scanned periodically for changes such as the addition of new files, modification to new files, deletion of files etc. The number of seconds to pause between each scan can be specified by means of the “Hot Folder Pause Length” under System Settings in the Management Console.
When a change in the file system is detected the searchable index will be updated as needed and the Plug-ins subscribing to these events are notified. Plug-ins capable of building previews (such as the Plug-In for EPS, Illustrator and PDF files) will be invoked as needed in order to keep the previews up to date.
In addition to the events triggered by the “Hot Folders”, eRez will also generate events when files are added, modified and deleted via the web interface.
Normally, all this takes silently places behind the scene and require no attention or intervention from the users and system administrator.
In certain situations such as after installing or modifying the settings for a Plug-in or recovering from hardware failure it is necessary to force a rebuild of the index and/or a complete rescan of one or more shared folders. The procedure for this is described in the following sections.
Forcing a complete rescan of one or more shared folders
In order for the “Hot Folder” to reliable detects changes to the files and folders in a shared folder a snapshot if the current state is created and stored between each scan. These snapshots are stored as a separate file for each shared folder in the directory tomcat/webapps/erez/WEB-INF/private/snapshots.
The names of the individual snapshot files are the same as the shared folders with the extension “.dat”. To force a complete rescan and trigger change events for all files in a shared folder the next time it is scanned, you can simply delete the snapshot file for the folder. To rescan all folders you can simply delete all of them.
Clearing the Searchable Index
The searchable index is stored as a number of separate files in the folder tomcat/webapps/erez/WEB-INF/private/index. To clear the index and start with a new blank index you must first stop the eRez server and then delete the “index” folder and all the files in it and start the eRez server again. When eRez is started again it will create a new blank index. Don’t forget to remove the snapshot files as well in order to re-index the files. Otherwise the existing files will not be indexed.
Please do no attempt to delete the index while the eRez server is running.
Selecting fields for indexing
When a file is added to or update in the searchable index the searchable text is built using the template “info.txt”, found in the folder “Tomcat/webapps/erez/WEB-INF/templates/indexer/”.
This template uses many of the common variables as defined for the Image Command in the HTTP Command reference.
You can modify this template by adding or removing the variables as described for the Image Command.
After modifying the template you must clear the searchable index and force a complete rescan of all the shared folders in order to rebuild the index using the new settings.
In addition to the text generated using the “info.txt” template some plug-ins, such as the plug-in supporting PDF files can be configured to extract text from the documents themselves.