Xapian omega: simple URLs for users (Apache)

Posted 04-11-2011 at 11:59 AM by catkin

Xapian's Omega component is primarily used as tool for building interactive text searching solutions but can be used directly.

When using it directly, a typical URL is http://<host_ID>/cgi-bin/omega. That results in omega running with its default CGI parameters. The default CGI parameters can be over-ridden by specifying them on the URL, for example http://<host_ID>/cgi-bin/omega?DB=<index_ID>&FMT=<template_ID>.

There are two problems with such complex URLs: firstly they are not easy to remember or dictate so not ideal for user-land and secondly they do not allow the system administrator to change CGI parameters, for example to try out a new index database and back out the change if desired.

If an Apache web server is being used these problems can be solved using a Redirect as shown in this example which redirects http://<host_ID>/search to http://<host_ID>/cgi-bin/omega?DB=docoll

Code:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/xapian.access.log" combined
    DocumentRoot "/srv/docoll"
    <Directory "/srv/docoll">
        AllowOverride None
        Options All
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
    <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin/omega/omega/">
        AllowOverride None
        Options None
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
    Redirect "/search" "/cgi-bin/omega?DB=docoll"
    ScriptAlias "/cgi-bin/" "/usr/lib/cgi-bin/omega/"
    ServerAdmin <email address hidden>
    ServerName "Document Collation"
</VirtualHost>

Notes:

/srv/docoll is where the documents are stored.
The Xapian Omega CGI binary is installed as /usr/lib/cgi-bin/omega/omega
'Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin/omega/omega/"' looks wrong -- it is not a directory; it is a file -- but this configuration does work.

This was tested on Debian 6.0 Squeeze running Apache 2.2.16 and Xapian 1.2.4 where the above file was /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/docoll. On CentOS 5.5 a similar configuration in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf should work; on Slackware 13.1 a similar configuration in /etc/httpd/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf should work.

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