-MKWS Target Selection
-=====================
+% MKWS Target Selection
+% Mike Taylor
MKWS accesses targets using the Pazpar2 metasearching engine. Although
available targets to use.
-1. Maintaining the library
---------------------------
+Maintaining the library
+-----------------------
The service proxy accesses sets of targets that are known as
"libraries". In general, each customer will have their own library,
searching for a matching User Access record.
-2. Authenticating your MWKS application onto the library
---------------------------------------------------------
+Authenticating your MWKS application onto the library
+-----------------------------------------------------
Some MKWS applications will be content to use the default library with
its selection of targets. Most, though, will want to define their own
Setting up such a library is a process of several stages.
-### Stage A: create the User Access account
+### Create the User Access account
Log in to MKAdmin administrate your library:
uses Referring URL, and another that uses a username/password pair to
be used when running an application from a different URL.
-### Stage B: tell the application to use the library
+### Tell the application to use the library
In the HTML of the application, tell MKWS to authenticate on to the
Service Proxy. When IP-based, referer-based or hostname-based
And ensure that access to the MWKS application is from the correct
Referrer URL or IP-range.
-### Stage C1 (optional): access by a different virtual hostname
+### (Optional): access by a different virtual hostname
When hostname-based authentication is in use, it's necessary to access
the Service Proxy as the correctly named virtual host. This can be
-done by setting the service_proxy_auth configuration item to a
+done by setting the `service_proxy_auth` configuration item to a
URL containing that hostname, such as
- //yourname.sp-mkws.indexdata.com/service-proxy/?command=auth&action=perconfig
+`//yourname.sp-mkws.indexdata.com/service-proxy/?command=auth&action=perconfig`
> TODO It should be possible to change just the hostname without
> needing to repeat the rest of the URL (protocol, path, query)
> TODO When changing the SP authentication URL, the Pazpar2 URL should
> in general change along with it.
-### Stage C2 (optional): embed credentials for access to the library
+### (Optional): embed credentials for access to the library
When credential-based authentication is in use (username and
password), it's necessary to pass these credentials into the Service
Proxy when establishing the session. This can most simply be done just
-by setting the service_proxy_auth configuration item to a URL such as
- //sp-mkws.indexdata.com/service-proxy/?command=auth&action=perconfig&username=mike&password=swordfish
+by setting the `service_proxy_auth` configuration item to a URL such as
+`//sp-mkws.indexdata.com/service-proxy/?command=auth&action=perconfig&username=mike&password=swordfish`
> TODO It should be possible to add the username and password to the
> configuration without needing to repeat the rest of the URL.
-### Stage D (optional): conceal credentials from HTML source
+### (Optional): conceal credentials from HTML source
Using a credential-based Service-Proxy authentication URL such as the
one above reveals the the credentials to public view -- to anyone who
Apache2 is the application's web-server, which we will call
yourname.com:
- - Add a rewriting authentication alias to the configuration:
- RewriteEngine on
- RewriteRule /spauth/ http://mkws.indexdata.com/service-proxy/?command=auth&action=check,login&username=U&password=PW [P]
- - Set thwe MKWS configuration item "service_proxy_auth" to:
- http://yourname.com/spauth/
- - Protect access to the local path http://yourname.com/spauth/
- (e.g. using a .htaccess file).
+- Add a rewriting authentication alias to the configuration:
+ RewriteEngine on
+ RewriteRule /spauth/ http://mkws.indexdata.com/service-proxy/?command=auth&action=check,login&username=U&password=PW [P]
-3. Choosing targets from the library
-------------------------------------
+- Set the MKWS configuration item `service_proxy_auth` to
+ `http://yourname.com/spauth/`
+- Protect access to the local path `http://yourname.com/spauth/`
+ (e.g. using a .htaccess file).
+
+
+Choosing targets from the library
+---------------------------------
MKWS applications can choose what subset of the library's targets to
use, by means of several alternative settings on individual widgets or
-in the mkws_config structure:
+in the `mkws_config` structure:
-* targets -- contains a Pazpar2 targets string, typically of the form
+* `targets` -- contains a Pazpar2 targets string, typically of the form
"pz:id=" or "pz:id~" followed by a pipe-separated list of low-level
target IDs.
At present, these IDs can take one of two forms, depending on the
configuration of the Service Proxy being used: they may be based on
ZURLs, so a typical value would be something like:
+
pz:id=josiah.brown.edu:210/innopac|lui.indexdata.com:8080/solr4/select?fq=database:4902
+
Or they may be UDBs, so a typical value would be something like:
+
pz:id=brown|artstor
-* targetfilter -- contains a CQL query which is used to find relevant
+* `targetfilter` -- contains a CQL query which is used to find relevant
targets from the relvant library. For example,
+
udb==Google_Images
+
Or
+
categories=news
-* target -- contains a single UDB, that of the sole target to be
+* `target` -- contains a single UDB, that of the sole target to be
used. For example
+
Google_Images
+
This is merely syntactic sugar for "targetfilter" with the query
- udb==NAME
+ `udb==NAME`
+
+- - -
+Copyright 2014 IndexData ApS. <http://indexdata.com>