Easily convert content from existing html into Plone.
Contents
FunnelWeb is a webcrawler which extracts website content such as titles, descriptions, images and content blocks from existing websites. It filters this content and uploads it into a new website which uses the Plone CMS. It gives you many options for adjusting how content is migrated. It is an invaluable tool when you want to migrate a site which doesn't use a CMS or there isn't a tool can migrate content directly from the sites database.
For those familar with collective.transmogrifier, funnelweb is a prebuilt pipeline that combines blueprints from four different packages (transmogrify.webcrawler, transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor transmogrify.siteanalyser and transmogrify.ploneremote). Due to the flexible nature of the collective.transmogrifier framework underneath advanced users can add further steps to their conversion process.
The work performed by the funnelweb script can be broken down into four sections:
- Crawling the site including caching locally so subsequent crawls are quicker and filtering out unwanted content (transmogrify.webcrawler)
- Remove boilerplate/templates (automatically or via rules) so just content remains (transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor)
- Analysing the site structure to improve the content quality including working out titles, default views, types of objects to create, what to show in navigation etc (transmogrify.siteanalyser)
- Uploading to the CMS such as Plone, or saving cleaned HTML to local directory (transmogrify.ploneremote)
FunnelWeb uses the mr.migrator framework which allows it's funnelweb collective.transmogrifier pipeline to be run:
- Within Plone itself . see mr.migrator for how to install.
- A command line script which can be installed via zc.buildout. Content is uploaded into Plone via it's web services API.
You can install via easy_install
$> easy_install funnelweb
This can be run by
$> buildout
Or funnelweb can be installed via a buildout recipe (see zc.buildout)
[buildout] parts += funnelweb [funnelweb] recipe = funnelweb $> buildout init $> bin/buildout
This can be run by
$> bin/funnelweb
The examples here will assume installation via buildout
Funnelweb is organised as a series of steps through which crawled items pass before eventually being uploaded. Each step has one or more configuration options so you can customise import process for your needs. Almost all imports will require some level of configurations.
Funnelweb gives three methods to configure your pipeline.
You can create your own pipeline.cfg that overrides and extends the default funnelweb pipeline.
For example, create a file called pipeline.cfg with the following
[transmogrifier] include = funnelweb.remote [crawler] url=http://collective-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
This will override the crawler blueprint setting "url". You can run this by
$> bin/funnelweb --pipeline=pipeline.cfg
You can view funnelweb.remote pipeline and all its options via the following command
$> bin/funnelweb --show-pipeline
You can also save this pipeline and customise it for your own needs
$> bin/funnelweb --show-pipeline > pipeline.cfg
$> {edit} pipeline.cfg
$> bin/funnelweb --pipeline=pipeline.cfg
Any arguement from the pipeline can be overridden via the command-line
e.g
$> bin/funnelweb --crawler:url=http://www.whitehouse.gov
All arguments are --(step:argument)=value. The first part of each configuration key is the step e.g. crawler. The second part is the particular configuration option for that particular step. e.g. url. This is then followed by = and value or values.
some options require multiple lines within a buildout part. These can be overridden via the commandline by repeating the same argument e.g.
$> bin/funnelweb --crawler:ignore=\.mp3 --crawler:ignore=\.pdf
You can see a list of all the arguments via
$> bin/funnelweb --help
Any command-line override can also be "baked" into the funnelweb script. e.g.
[buildout] parts += funnelweb [funnelweb] recipe = funnelweb crawler-url=http://www.whitehouse.gov pipeline=pipeline.cfg
Any paramater of the form
[step] blah = blah
will become in buildout
[funnelweb] recipe = funnelweb step-blah = blah
and on the command line
bin/funnelweb --step:blah=blah
Below is an outline of how you might typically use funnelweb.
- First set up buildout to make a command line funnelweb
- Create a pipeline.cfg including funnelweb.remote (see Using a local pipeline configuration)
- Bake pipeline file into buildout (see Buildout Override)
- Test crawl your site and store it into the cache (see Crawling - HTML to import)
- You might need to set some crawler:ignore rules
- crawl the whole site into your cache (see Crawling - HTML to import)
- Crawl the first 10 pages using --crawler:max=10
- Use Templates in debug mode to find Title, Description and Text your pages
- Upload to Plone to test
- if the structure and urls are what you expect use Site Analysis
- Repeat crawling more pages
The full list of steps that can be configured along with the transmogrifier blueprint for each
- Crawling
| crawler: | transmogrify.webcrawler |
|---|---|
| cache: | transmogrify.webcrawler.cache |
| typeguess: | transmogrify.webcrawler.typerecognitor |
| drop: | collective.transmogrifier.sections.condition |
- Templates
| template1: | transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor |
|---|---|
| template2: | transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor |
| template3: | transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor |
| template4: | transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor |
| templateauto: | transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor.auto |
- Site Analysis
| sitemapper: | transmogrify.siteanalyser.sitemapper |
|---|---|
| indexguess: | transmogrify.siteanalyser.defaultpage |
| titleguess: | transmogrify.siteanalyser.title |
| attachmentguess: | transmogrify.siteanalyser.attach |
| hideguess: | transmogrify.siteanalyser.hidefromnav |
| urltidy: | transmogrify.siteanalyser.urltidy |
| addfolders: | transmogrify.pathsorter |
| changetype: | collective.transmogrifier.sections.inserter |
- Uploading
| ploneupload: | transmogrify.ploneremote.remoteconstructor |
|---|---|
| ploneupdate: | transmogrify.ploneremote.remoteschemaupdater |
| plonehide: | transmogrify.ploneremote.remotenavigationexcluder |
| publish: | collective.transmogrifier.sections.inserter |
| plonepublish: | transmogrify.ploneremote.remoteworkflowupdater |
| plonealias: | transmogrify.ploneremote.remoteredirector |
| ploneprune: | transmogrify.ploneremote.remoteprune |
| localupload: | transmogrify.webcrawler.cache |
or you use the commandline help to view the list of available options
$> bin/funnelweb --help
The most common configuration options for these steps are detailed below.
Funnelweb imports HTML either from a live website, from a folder on disk, or a folder on disk with HTML which was retrieved from a live website and may still have absolute links refering to that website.
Funnelweb can only import things it can crawl, i.e. content that is linked from HTML. If your site contains javascript links or password protected content, then you may have to perform some extra steps to get funnelweb to crawl your content.
To crawl a live website, supply the crawler with a base HTTP URL to start crawling from. This URL must be the URL which all the other URLs you want from the site start with.
For example
$> bin/funnelweb --crawler:url=http://www.whitehouse.gov --crawler:max=50 --ploneupload=http://admin:admin@localhost:8080/Plone
will restrict the crawler to the first 50 pages and then convert the content into a local Plone site.
The site you crawl will be cached locally, so if you run funnelweb again it will run much quicker. If you'd like to disable the local caching use
$> bin/funnelweb --cache:output=
If you'd like to reset the cache, refreshing it's data, set the crawlers cache to nothing
$> bin/funnelweb --crawler:cache=
By default the cache is stored in var/funnelwebcache/{site url}/. You can set this to another directory using:
$> bin/funnelweb --cache:output=my_new_dir
You can also crawl a local directory of HTML with relative links by just using a file:// style URL
$> bin/funnelweb --crawler:url=file:///mydirectory
or if the local directory contains HTML saved from a website and might have absolute URLs in it, the you can set this as the cache. The crawler will always look up the cache first
$> bin/funnelweb --crawler:url=http://therealsite.com --crawler:cache=mydirectory
The following will not crawl anything larger than 4Mb
$> bin/funnelweb --crawler:maxsize=400000
To skip crawling links by regular expression
[funnelweb]
recipe = funnelweb
crawler-url=http://www.whitehouse.gov
crawler-ignore = \.mp3
\.mp4
If funnelweb is having trouble parsing the HTML of some pages, you can preprocesses the HTML before it is parsed. e.g.
[funnelweb] recipe = funnelweb crawler-patterns = (<script>)[^<]*(</script>) crawler-subs = \1\2
If you'd like to skip processing links with certain mimetypes you can use the
drop:condition option. This TALES expression determines what will be processed further
[funnelweb]
recipe = funnelweb
drop-condition: python:item.get('_mimetype') not in ['application/x-javascript','text/css','text/plain','application/x-java-byte-code'] and item.get('_path','').split('.')[-1] not in ['class']
Funnelweb has a built-in clustering algorithm that tries to automatically extract the content from the HTML template. This is slow and not always effective. Often you will need to input your own template extraction rules.
If you'd like to turn off the automatic templates
$> bin/funnelweb --templateauto:condition=python:False
Rules are in the form of
(title|description|text|anything) = (text|html|optional) XPath
For example
[funnelweb] recipe = funnelweb crawler-site_url=http://www.whitehouse.gov ploneupload-target=http://admin:admin@localhost:8080/Plone template1-title = text //div[@class='body']//h1[1] template1-_delete1 = optional //div[@class='body']//a[@class='headerlink'] template1-_delete2 = optional //div[contains(@class,'admonition-description')] template1-description = text //div[contains(@class,'admonition-description')]//p[@class='last'] template1-text = html //div[@class='body']
Note that for a single template e.g. template1, ALL of the XPaths need to match otherwise that template will be skipped and the next template tried. If you'd like to make it so that a single XPath isn't nessary for the template to match then use the keyword optional or optionaltext instead of text or html before the XPath.
In the default pipeline there are four templates called template1, template2, template3 and template4.
When an XPath is applied within a single template, the HTML it matches will be removed from the page. Another rule in that same template can't match the same HTML fragment.
If a content part is not useful to Plone (e.g. redundant text, title or description) it is a way to effectively remove that HTML from the content.
To help debug your template rules you can set debug mode
$> bin/funnelweb --template1:debug --template2:debug
Setting debug mode on templateauto will give you details about the rules it uses.
$> bin/funnelweb --templateauto:debug
...
DEBUG:templateauto:'icft.html' discovered rules by clustering on 'http://...'
Rules:
text= html //div[@id = "dal_content"]//div[@class = "content"]//p
title= text //div[@id = "dal_content"]//div[@class = "content"]//h3
Text:
TITLE: ...
MAIN-10: ...
MAIN-10: ...
MAIN-10: ...
For more information about XPath see
- http://www.w3schools.com/xpath/default.asp
- http://blog.browsermob.com/2009/04/test-your-selenium-xpath-easily-with-firebug/
In order to provide a cleaner-looking Plone site, there are several options to analyse the entire crawled site and clean it up. These are turned off by default.
To determine if an item is a default page for a container (it has many links to items in that container, even if not contained in that folder), and then move it to that folder, use
$> bin/funnelweb --indexguess:condition=python:True
You can automatically find better page titles by analysing backlink text
[funnelweb]
recipe = funnelweb
titleguess-condition = python:True
titleguess-ignore =
click
read more
close
Close
http:
https:
file:
img
The following will find items only referenced by one page and move them into a new folder with the page as the default view.
$> bin/funnelweb --attachmentguess:condition=python:True
or the following will only move attachments that are images and use index-html as the new
name for the default page of the newly created folder
[funnelweb]
recipe = funnelweb
attachmentguess-condition = python: subitem.get('_type') in ['Image']
attachmentguess-defaultpage = index-html
The following will tidy up the URLs based on a TALES expression
$> bin/funnelweb --urltidy:link_expr="python:item['_path'].endswith('.html') and item['_path'][:-5] or item['_path']"
If you'd like to move content around before it's uploaded you can use the urltidy step as well e.g.
$> bin/funnelweb --urltidy:link_expr=python:item['_path'].startswith('/news') and '/otn/news'+item['path'][5:] or item['_path']
If you want to hide content from navigation you can use hideguess
$> bin/funnelweb --hideguess:condition=python:item['path']=='musthide'
Uploading happens via remote XML-RPC calls so can be done to a live running site anywhere.
To set where a the site will be uploaded to use
$> bin/funnelweb --ploneupload:target=http://username:password@myhost.com/myfolder
Currently only basic authentication via setting the username and password in the url is supported. If no target is set then the site will be crawled but not uploaded.
If you'd like to change the type of what's uploaded
$> bin/funnelweb --changetype:value=python:{'Folder':'HelpCenterReferenceManualSection','Document':HelpCenterLeafPage}.get(item['_type'],item['_type'])
This will set a new value for the type of the item. You could make this conditional e.g
$> bin/funnelweb --changetype:condition=python:item['_path].startswith('/news')
or by using a more complex expression for the new type
$> bin/funnelweb --changetype:value=python:item['_path'].startswith('/news') and 'NewNewsType' or item['_type]
By default, funnelweb will automatically create Plone aliases based on the original crawled URLs, so that any old links will automatically be redirected to the new cleaned-up urls. You can disable this by
$> bin/funnelweb --plonealias:target=
You can change what items get published to which state by setting the following
[funnelweb]
recipe = funnelweb
publish-value = python:["publish"]
publish-condition = python:item.get('_type') != 'Image' and not options.get('disabled')
Funnelweb will hide certain items from Plone's navigation if that item was only ever linked to from within the content area. You can disable this behavior by
$> bin/funnelweb --plonehide:target=
You can get a local file representation of what will be uploaded by using the following
$> bin/funnelweb --localupload:output=var/mylocaldir
Feel free to fork and add your own examples for extracting content for common sites or CMS's
As an example the following buildout will create a funnelweb script that will convert a regular sphinx documentation into remote Plone content inside a PloneHelpCenter
[transmogrifier]
include = funnelweb.remote
[crawler]
url=http://collective-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
ignore=
cgi-bin
javascript:
_static
_sources
genindex\.html
search\.html
saesrchindex\.js
[template1]
title = text //div[@class='body']//h1[1]
description = optional //div[contains(@class,'admonition-description')]/p[@class='last']/text()
text = html //div[@class='body']
# Fields with '_' won't be uploaded to Plone so will be effectively removed
_permalink = text //div[@class='body']//a[@class='headerlink']
_label = optional //p[contains(@class,'admonition-title')]
_remove_useless_links = optional //div[@id = 'indices-and-tables']
# Images will get titles from backlink text
[titleguess]
condition = python:True
# Pages linked to content will be moved together
[indexguess]
condition = python:True
# Hide the images folder from navigation
[hideguess]
condition = python:item.get("_path","").startswith('_images') and item.get('_type')=='Folder'
# Upload as PHC instead of Folders and Pages
[changetype]
value=python:{'Folder':'HelpCenterReferenceManualSection','Document':'HelpCenterLeafPage'}.get(item['_type'],item['_type'])
# Save locally for debugging purposes
[localupload]
output=manual
# All folderish content should be checked if they contain
# any items on the remote site which are not presented locally. including base folder
[ploneprune]
condition=python:item.get('_type') in ['HelpCenterReferenceManualSection','HelpCenterReferenceManual'] or item['_path'] == ''
#TODO
#TODO
#TODO
Add your own examples here
You can show additional debug output on any particular set by setting a debug commandline switch. For instance to see see additional details about template matching failures
$> bin/funnelweb --template1:debug
You might need to insert further transformation steps for your particular conversion usecase. To do this, you can extend funnelweb's underlying transmogrifier pipeline. Funnelweb uses a transmogrifier pipeline to perform the needed transformations and all commandline and recipe options refer to options in the pipeline.
You can view pipeline and all its options via the following command
$> bin/funnelweb --show-pipeline
You can also save this pipeline and customise it for your own needs
$> bin/funnelweb --show-pipeline > pipeline.cfg
$> {edit} pipeline.cfg
$> bin/funnelweb --pipeline=pipeline.cfg
Customising the pipeline allows you add your own personal transformations which haven't been pre-considered by the standard funnelweb tool.
See transmogrifier documentation to see how to add your own blueprints or add blueprints that already exist to your custom pipeline.
If you have decided you need to customise your pipeline and you want to install transformation
steps that use blueprints not already included in funnelweb or transmogrifier, you can include
them using the eggs option in a funnelweb buildout part
[funnelweb] recipe = funnelweb eggs = myblueprintpackage pipeline = mypipeline.cfg
However, this only works if your blueprint package includes the following setuptools entrypoint
in its setup.py
entry_points="""
[z3c.autoinclude.plugin]
target = transmogrify
""",
)
Note
Some transmogrifier blueprints assume they are running inside a Plone process such as those in plone.app.transmogrifier (see http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plone.app.transmogrifier). Funnelweb doesn't run inside a Plone process so these blueprints won't work. If you want upload content into Plone, you can instead use transmogrify.ploneremote which provides alternative implementations which will upload content remotely via XML-RPC. transmogrify.ploneremote is already included in funnelweb as it is what funnelweb's default pipeline uses.
When using the default blueprints in funnelweb the following are some of the attributes that will become attached to the items that each blueprint has access to. These can be used in the various condition statements etc. as well as your own blueprints.
_site_url- The base of the url as passed into the webcrawler
_path- The remainder of the URL.
_site_url+_path= URL _mimetype- The mimetype as returned by the crawler
_content- The content of the item crawled, include image, file or HTML data.
_orig_path- The original path of the item that was crawled. This is useful for setting redirects so you don't get 404 errors after migrating content.
_sort_order- An integer representing the order in which this item was crawled. Helps to determine what order items should be sorted in folders created on the server if your site has navigation which has links ordered top to bottom.
_type- The type of object to be created as returned by the "typeguess" step
title,description,text, etc.- The template steps will typically create fields with content in them taken from
_content _template- The template steps will leave the HTML that wasn't seperated out into different fields in this attribute.
_defaultpage- Set on an Folder item where you want to tell the uploading steps to set the containing item
mentioned in
_defaultpageto be the default page shown on that folder instead of a content listing. _transitions- Specify the workflow action you'd like to make on an item after it's uploaded or updated.
_origin- This is used internally with the transmogrify.siteanalysis.relinker blueprint as a way to
tell it that you have changed the
_pathand you now want the relinker to find any links that refer to_originto now point to_path.
see http://github.com/collective/funnelweb/blob/master/funnelweb/remote.cfg or type
$> bin/funnelweb --show-pipeline
- Code repository: http://github.com/collective/funnelweb
- Questions and comments to http://github.com/collective/funnelweb/issues
- Report bugs at http://github.com/collective/funnelweb/issues
The code of funnelweb itself is fairly minimal. It just sets up and runs a transmogrifier pipeline. The hard work is actually done by five packages which each contain one or more transmogrifier blueprints. These are:
- Webcrawler
- http://pypi.python.org/pypi/transmogrify.webcrawler https://github.com/djay/transmogrify.webcrawler
- HTMLContentExtractor
- http://pypi.python.org/pypi/transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor https://github.com/djay/transmogrify.htmlcontentextractor
- SiteAnalyser
- http://pypi.python.org/pypi/transmogrify.siteanalyser https://github.com/djay/transmogrify.siteanalyser
- PathSorter
- http://pypi.python.org/pypi/transmogrify.pathsorter https://github.com/djay/transmogrify.pathsorter
- PloneRemote
- http://pypi.python.org/pypi/transmogrify.ploneremote https://github.com/djay/transmogrify.ploneremote
Each has it's own issue tracker and we will accept pull requests for new functionality or bug fixes. The current state of documentation and testing is not yet at a high level.
- 2008 Built to import large corporate intranet
- 2009 released pretaweb.funnelweb (deprecated). Built into Plone UI > Actions > Import
- 2010 Split blueprints into transmogrify.* release on pypi
- 2010 collective.developermanual sphinx to Plone uses funnelweb blueprints
- 2010 funnelweb Recipe + Script released
- 2011 split runner out into mr.migrator