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httpindex(1) General Commands Manual httpindex(1)

httpindex - HTTP front-end for SWISH++ indexer

wget [ options ] URL... 2>&1 | httpindex [ options ]

httpindex is a front-end for index++(1) to index files copied from remote servers using wget(1). The files (in a copy of the remote directory structure) can be kept, deleted, or replaced with their descriptions after indexing.

The wget(1) options that are required are: -A, -nv, -r, and -x; the ones that are highly recommended are: -l, -nh, -t, and -w. (See the EXAMPLE.)

httpindex accepts the same short options as index++(1) except for -H, -I, -l, -r, -S, and -V.

The following options are unique to httpindex:

Replace the text of local copies of retrieved files with their descriptions after they have been indexed. This is useful to display file descriptions in search results without having to have complete copies of the remote files thus saving filesystem space. (See the extract_description() function in WWW(3) for details about how descriptions are extracted.)
Delete the local copies of retrieved files after they have been indexed. This prevents your local filesystem from filling up with copies of remote files.

To index all HTML and text files on a remote web server keeping descriptions locally:

wget -A html,txt -linf -t2 -rxnv -nh -w2 http://www.foo.com 2>&1 |
httpindex -d -e'html:*.html,text:*.txt'

Note that you need to redirect wget(1)'s output from standard error to standard output in order to pipe it to httpindex.

Exits with a value of zero only if indexing completed sucessfully; non-zero otherwise.

In addition to those for index++(1), httpindex does not correctly handle the use of multiple -e, -E, -m, or -M options (because the Perl script uses the standard GetOpt::Std package for processing command-line options that doesn't). The last of any of those options ``wins.''

The work-around is to use multiple values for those options seperated by commas to a single one of those options. For example, if you want to do:

httpindex -e'html:*.html' -e'text:*.txt'

do this instead:

httpindex -e'html:*.html,text:*.txt'

index++(1), wget(1), WWW(3)

Paul J. Lucas <pauljlucas@mac.com>

August 2, 2005 SWISH++