Content Search

Content View Connectors or Content Search Connector allow you to search content and then take action against the results. They are used by Content Views in Federation to populate results and update indexes as needed.


Create a Connection

To create a Content Search Connection select Content Search from the navigation menu.

Click the Create New Content Search Connection Button.

Fill out the following fields. Most fields with default values will not need to be changed.

Basic Configuration (Required)

Field

Description

Connector ID

A unique identifier for this connection i.e. simflofy_demo (Alphanumeric, dashes and underscore characters only)

Note:  Connector ids are how 3Sixty identifies the individual connector when receiving calls from other sources, such as Federation Service. This value must be usable as part of url. Use the description field if you need more than a few letters/numbers to describe the connection. The description shows up with its connectorId across the product.

Description

The text that will be displayed on drop-downs etc. to identify this connection.

Type

The type of Search Connection (Solr, Mongo, Elastic etc.)

Keep Connection Alive

3Sixty will cache the connection for a given amount of time before discarding it.

Keep Alive in Milliseconds

How long to keep the connection alive before discarding it (300000 is 5 minutes)

Security Mode

This is how to authenticate with the back-end search. The most common method is to use the appropriate authentication connection

  • Authentication: Use the Authentication connection to access the server

  • None: Do not use any authentication

Authentication Connection

If Authentication is chosen for the security mode, select the Authentication connection to use.

Mapping Type

Select the mapping type you want to use for this connection. Either Single or Group.

  • Mapping: Select the Mapping or Mapping Group


Search Configuration

General Configuration (Required)

Field

Description

Collection

The name of the collection to query against. ElasticSearch refers to these and "Indexes", but for our purposes they are collections.

Sort Field/Order

Will contain the values in your field list. Allows you to choose which field to sort on and whether to sort ascending or descending.

Facet Fields

Facet fields are simply occurrence counts for the entered fields. Content type counting is the most common example. Facet fields are required for a number of sidebar widgets and tasks.

Field List

The field values to return in a result set. Similar to the SELECT Field1, Field2 clause in SQL.

Tip:  Click the Add All Default Fields Button to add the most commonly used fields.

Search Security

Important:  Only one of these options may be selected at a time

Filter: The authenticated user's group ids and login will be added to each search request. This requires the content to be indexed using the Index User Group Task
See this example

Restrict: Only users from the selected groups will be able to use this search connection, regardless of role. If this connection in used as part of a Content View, users outside these groups will not be able to see it in their View List in Discovery. If you do not have any user groups, nothing will show up to select from. Create User Groups


Connection Configuration

Individuals connectors might have specific fields that need to be filled out in addition to the basic configuration fields. Refer to the documentation for each connector to see which fields are available.

Additionally, this is where you can use the "Add Custom Parameter" button to set any default query values for the connection.

A query_fq configuration param lets you define facet queries behind the scene. This is done to provide limited views or subsets of data in the search. Essentially you could create any number of views on the same date but each view would display different results. This can also be used in a role base system where you have views setup for specific user roles.Unless the fq is already encoded, you will need to wrap it in the encode() function where it will be URLEncoded UTF-8.

The syntax is:

query_fq for the first one
query_fq1 for the second
etc.


Available Content Search Connectors

Elasticsearch Connector

MongoDB GridFS Search Connector

MongoDB Search Connector

SOLR Search Connector (End of Life)


Related Articles:

Using 3Sixty Federation

Discovery Dashboard Widget Tutorial

Content Search REST Endpoints