How to get the Content Description in plain text instead of encrypted form

[raghavlyon]

I was evaluating the product since my project sponsors are quite impressed with zoom.
Only thing they want to see the text of the URL, ie, the content description.
I believe that it is saved in zoom_pagetext.zdat but in encrypted form.
Is there any way that we can see this data in a readable form instead of encryption.
If the SDK can do that job please do let me know.
I can give go head for Zoom Search Engine to my sponsors, if I can get the content description in readable format.

Thank you,
Regards
RL

[David]

I am a bit confused, are you asking to see the URL of pages in the search results, or asking to see the page's meta data description? Or both.

In any case both of these can be displayed. You can alter what is displayed in the search results from the "results layout" configuration window.

You don't need to worry about encryption (but just for the record, none of the index data is encrypted)

[raghavlyon]

In result layout configuration window there is a checkbox which say Content Description, if check that then I am allowed to enter the number characters to be displayed. I am sure that content description is the main content of URL because I compared that. I can read the URL, title & meta description from the file zoom_pagedata.zdat.
I like to read get the content description which I think is in zoom_pagetext.zdat file. The data in zoom_pagetext.zdat is all encrypted.

Can you please provide me more information how to get the content description?

If I can get the content description then it will be great and it will resolve my problem and my sponsors problem too.

I think whatever I mentioned above is enough to understand. If the above details not proper then please do let me know I will try to provide more details with example.

[David]

The data in zoom_pagetext.zdat is all encrypted

We don't use encryption in the index files. If you continue to think we do, despite us saying otherwise, then you don't know what encryption is.

...there is a checkbox which say Content Description

There is no check box with this name. If you want to see the page's meta description in the search results, then you need to check the "Meta description", check box.

You might be referring to the context description. Which is nothing to do with meta data.

After making configuration changes you need to re-index your site and upload the files index files again.

[raghavlyon]

I am sorry, it is my mistake, it is Context Description. Please correct me if I am wrong now. I think Context Description is the actual content of the page.

I can only see URL, Title of a page and Meta Description which exists in file zoom_pagedata.zdat.

I am hoping that Zoom Search Engine Indexer is also saving context description in some file which is readable to a human person.

Can you please let me know in which file or which location you are storing the context description?

Thank you

[Ray]

The index files generated by Zoom are designed for use with Zoom's search scripts and CGI applications only. They are not designed for use in other applications.

The "zoom_pagedata.zdat" file contains the data used to generate context description, but it is not useful on its own. You can't retrieve a meaningful context description from it without accessing data from the other ZDAT index files, and doing all the things required in a proper search.

It sounds like you have some misconceptions of what you think you can do with the data within the file. Perhaps you should elaborate on what you are actually trying to achieve.

[raghavlyon]

My aim is to get the content from 5 different sites, which are dynamic, of my customer using zoom and store the data in another site.
It seems that there no way that I can get the actual content of a page using a zoom except the title, meta description.

Thank you for the reply.
I admit that I really like the product but my clients requirement is to get the actual content of page, in this case I have to write my own crawler.

Thanks again.

[Ray]

It is still not very clear what you mean by "getting the content". Surely, there is a criteria as to which pages you want, and which part of the page content you want. If you wanted the entire page content, then you might as well retrieve it from the page itself? What is the objective in your need to extract content from the search index? (you just keep saying you need to do this without saying why). Your description is too vague for us to provide practical advice.

Having said that, Zoom can be setup to return results in XML format, which can allow you to post-process the data as necessary. The MasterNode product, in particular, is designed to accumulate results from multiple sites or sets of index files. I'm not completely sure from your vague description, but this might be something you'd be interested in.

[raghavlyon]

I will check the MasterNode.

I really appreciate for your time.

Thank you