The term ‘web data’ refers to raw data that has been fetched via the edgeWeb component of the edgeCore server. Web Data connections specify an HTTP connection through which edgeCore can retrieve structured data. It takes advantage of the SSO capabilities of the edgeWeb component, as well as the content transformation functionality (though this is generally not required).
Web data is made available to the data transformation pipeline through the standard types of document-based data feed:
| Feed Type | |
|---|---|
 |
CSV |
|
Custom (JavaScript) |
|
JSON |
|
XML XPath |
|
XML XSLT |
Connection Configuration
The Web Data Connection configuration is identical to that for a Web Content Connection.
Feed Configuration
Configuring a web data feed is potentially quite involved. A number of options are made available to define exactly how the data is to be retrieved:
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Feed Name | Standard Feed Name Property – must be unique amongst all feeds. |
| Description | This is where the administrator can enter notes for the feed. |
| URI | The URI of the document to be retrieved. |
| HTTP method | HTTP method with which the document will be retrieved. Valid values are GET and POST. |
| Request Headers | If additional headers need to be defined for the request to be processed correctly, they can be defined here. |
| Rule Name | By default, the BaseData rule is used to process content for web data feeds. This is normally sufficient, but if a custom rule has been defined and put in the appropriate place on the filesystem, it can be selected here. |
| Session Scope | By default, SSO sessions are maintained at the connection level (a single login session is shared between all feeds coming off that connection). This property provides the option of scoping a session to the configured feed only. |
| Logging, and Verbose Logging | The logging level for this web data feed. By default it is set to Production, for which logging will be performed according to the default configuration (normally set to INFO level). If set to Debug, logging will be performed at DEBUG level. If logging is set to Debug, a further option to enable tracing, called Verbose Logging, is enabled. |
| Poll Rate | Common with all data feeds. If content derived from this feed is being viewed on a Page, then this defines the rate at which data should be refreshed. |
| Enable Server Subscription | Common with all data feeds. Data will be refreshed in the background by the Edge server, whether it is being actively viewed or not. When responsiveness is more important than up-to-date data, this option should be checked. Data will be refreshed at the rate specified by the Poll Rate property. |
Errors and Troubleshooting
The types of errors encountered here are identical to either web content feeds (where data retrieval is concerned), or the specific parser being used (with relation to processing the retrieved data).