CGI + IIS Server

[skynyrd]

Hi,

After setting up CGI on IIS Server I`m having problems with relative links. My search engine indexing PDF files on company network drives. Indexing works fine, searching - great, but for some reason I can`t setup relative links in Zoom. It always starting from the root directory of my website.

My test setup:

CGI index files in: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\cgi

PDF Files indexed: C:\Users\twzorek\Desktop\SPECS

I tried Indexing Options --> Rewrite Links, but it keeps linking from the root folder.
I tried Base URL --> ../../../Users/twzorek/Desktop/SPECS with no positive results.

Any advice ?

Thomas

[Ray]

Relative links on a website doesn't really work like that. They're relative from the browser's point of view.

Note that you're accessing the search CGI from your browser with a URL like this:

http://myserver/cgi/search.cgi

So a link of "../../../" is 3 levels up from the "cgi" folder on the "myserver" domain. This doesn't exist. There's only one level (the cgi folder).

And, you're actually expecting to cross schemes and protocols. The CGI is being accessed via a http:// domain. But the PDF files are NOT served by the web server.

You need to determine what you are trying to do. Is this search engine to be used by people over the network? Or is it only for your personal use?

In the case of the former, how would they access the PDF files if they're within your C:\Users\ folder?

If they are to be accessible by people over the network, then the PDF files should really be served from IIS as well, and should be hosted within C:\inetpub\wwwroot\.

If it's only to be used from your machine, you could change your base URL to something with a file:// scheme as described here. Support of this varies from browser to browser.

[skynyrd]

Hi Ray,

That`s the problem, I read the Zoom manual and all the examples are for Indexing Websites inside the root folder where my task is to create Search Engine for library of PDF files (engineering documents) stored in different locations aver the notwork providing search page for company employees.

Website is hosted on IIS Server with CGI Search Engine in the C:\inetpub\wwwroot\cgi\ . All indexed files (PDF) are in the shared network drives all over the network:

For example - file:///\\abdatat1\engineering$\SPECS_1 <---- Where the PDF files are stored.
file:///\\efdatat2\manufacturing$\design\SPECS_2 <---- Where the PDF files are stored

Due to the size of PDF library (500.000 files) and other restrictions I`m unable to move these files to the C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ folder. Is there any other way to overide creation of links in Zoom to link to shared locations over the intranet ?

Thank you

[Ray]

The short answer is: Most modern browsers do not allow you to link from a http:// web page, to a file:// (local or network shared) file. This is usually a security risk, and by default, browsers prevent this.

With this default behaviour, you can only link to a file:// URL from another page that is a file:// URL.

You can however change browser settings to allow this. But this would require changing every browser that will be used.

Some details here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...network-shares

If you are willing to do this, then you can achieve this by specifying the start points and appropriate base URLs.

In your examples, this would be like:

Start point folder: \\abdata1\engineering$\SPECS_1\
Base URL: file://abdata1/engineering$/SPECS_1/

Start point folder: \\efdatat2\manufacturing$\design\SPECS_2\
Base URL: file://efdata2/manufacturing$/design/SPECS_2/

So as mentioned, this would all be fine provided your browsers are not preventing links from working. Note that you can tell this is the case when clicking on the link does nothing, but right-clicking and selecting "Copy shortcut" and then pasting the URL into the address bar and hitting Enter, will take you to the page.

(Side note: The Javascript platform option would allow you to run the search from a file:// URL and thus link to other file:// URLs. However, with the amount of documents you're looking at, this is unlikely to have enough resources. Unless you divide up your data sets and have multiple search pages.)

[skynyrd]

Hi Ray,

Thank you again for your help. I will try both options and then will see.

Thank you,

Thomas