Overview

The File Extractor ingests documents from local files, fileshares, S3 repositories, and Infinit.e shares (eg uploaded via the file uploader). It can also be used to ingest the output of custom analytic plugins.

This page has been broken down into the following sections for ease of localization.

Format

{
	"display": string,
	"file":
	{
 		"username" : "string", // Username for file share authentication,
 		"password" : "string", // Password for file share authentication,
 		"domain" : "string", // Domain location of the file share, 
 
 		"pathInclude": "string", // Optional - regex, only files with complete paths matching the regular expression are processed further
 		"pathExclude": "string', // Optional - regex, files with complete paths matching the regular expression are ignored (and matching directories are not traversed)
 		"renameAfterParse" "string", // Optional, renames files after they have been ingested - the substitution variables "$name" and "$path" are supported; or "" or "." deletes the file
		 	// (eg "$path/processed/$name")
 
 		"type": "string", // One of "json", "xml", "tika", "*sv", or null to auto decide
		"mode": "string", // "normal" (defaults if mode not present), "streaming", see below 
 		"XmlRootLevelValues" : [ "string" ], // The root level value of XML to which parsing should begin 
 			// also currently used as an optional field for JSON, if present will create a document each time that field is encountered
 			// (if left blank for JSON, assumes the file consists of a list of concatenated JSON objects and creates a document from each one)
 			// (Also reused with completely different meaning for CSV - see below)
			// (In office mode, can be used to configure Tika - see below)
 		"XmlIgnoreValues" : [ "string" ], // XML values that, when parsed, will be ignored - child elements will still be part of the document metadata, just promoted to the parent level. 
 		// (Also reused with completely different meaning for CSV)
 		"XmlSourceName" : "string", // If present, and a primary key specified below is also found then the URL gets built as XmlSourceName + xml[XmlPrimaryKey], Also supported for JSON and CSV.
 		"XmlPrimaryKey" : "string", // Parent to XmlRootLevelValues. This key is used to build the URL as described above. Also supported for JSON and CSV.
	}
}

Description

The file extractor ingests various file types from their locations and performs processing based on the configuration.

The File Extractor is capable of ingesting files from the following locations:

• Windows/Samba shares
• harvester's local filesystem
• Amazon S3

The File Extractor supports the following file types

• Office documents (Word, Powerpoint etc.)
• text-based documents (emails)
• CSV
• XML and JSON
• Infinit.e shares
• The results of Infinit.e plugins

The following table describes the parameters of the file extractor configuration.

Connecting to File Locations

The configuration will depend on the locations of the files you are trying to extract.

Local Filesystem

To connect to the text extractor's local filesystem the following url format must be used:

"file://<path including leading '/'>"

Infinit.e

You can connect the File extractor to Infinit.e shares and the results of custom jobs.

Infinit.e Shares

To connect to an Infinit.e share, the following url format must be used:

"inf://share/<shareid>/<ignored>"

The share id can be obtained in the url of the file uploader.

After the "<shareid>/" portion of the URL, any arbitrary text can be added to make the role of the share clearer. This text is ignored by the file harvester.

The source must share at least one community with the share in order to be processed.

Infinit.e Jobs

To connect to an Infinit.e custom job, the following url format must be used:

"inf://custom/<customid-or-jobtitle>"

custom id and title can be obtained in the URL field of the plugin manager.

After the "<customid-or-jobtitle>/" portion of the URL, any arbitrary text can be added to make the role of the share clearer. This text is ignored by the file harvester.

The source must share at least one community with the custom plugin in order to be processed.

Windows/Samba

To connect to a Windows/Samba share, the following url format must be used:

"smb://server:port/path"

Amazon S3

To connect to an Amazon S3 location, the following url format must be used:

"s3://bucket_name>/" or "s3://<bucket_name>/path/"

The files in the S3 bucket should be readable by the account specified by the access key.

Username/Password

A username/password is required to connect to your Amazon S3 environment.

For S3, the Access ID should be entered into the "username", and the Secret Key into the "password"

Domain

This field can be left blank for Amazon S3 environments.

File Types

This section describes the configurations for the various supported file types.

Office Files 

To connect to Office files, the following url format must be used:

• the path of the file (ie file.url + path-relative-to-url)

Example:

Connects to an "office" document on a samba drive.

"smb://modus:139/enron/enron_mail_20110402/maildir/"

Configuring Apache Tika

You can use the XmlRootlevelValues parameter to configure Apache Tika for parsing of Office-type files.

XmlRootlevelValues will accept a sting value whcih can be used to pass configuration values to Apache's Tika module.  Currently there are supported configurations:

Configuring Tika Output Format

You can include the string "output:xml" or "output:html" to change the output of Tika from raw text to XML or HTML.

Configuring Tika Elements

You can configure Tika Elemenst by using paramName and paramValue to send functions and arguments to Tika.

The string must be in the following format

• Strings of the format "MEDIATYPE:{ paramName: paramValue, ...}"  
  
  

<MEDIATYPE> is in standard MIME format and determines which Tika element to configure; the paramNames and paramValues correspond to functions and arguments.

Example:

 "application/pdf:{'setEnableAutoSpace':false}" 

where application/pdf will calll PDFParser. and setEnableAutoSpace(false)corresponds to a paramName and paramValue.

JSON/XML/CSV

To connect to these file types, the following url format must be used:

• path-of-file (as above) + <hash of object> + ".csv"/.json/.xml

Example:

To connect to a samba fileshare

"url": "smb://FILESHARE:139/cyber_logs/"

If xmlsourcename and xmlprimarykey are specified, the following url format must be used

• xmlsourcename + object,get(xmlprimarykey)

Example:

"url": "smb://HOST:139/SHARE/PATH/TO/"

Configuring JSON

You can use the file extractor to configure the root JSON object for parsing.

In the example below, the parameter XMLRootlevelValues is used to set the root object.

In addition, you can use XmlSourceName to build the document URL.  If specified, the document URL is build as "XmlSourceName" + xml("XmlPrimaryKey").

You can use the parameter XmlPrimaryKey to help identify whether a record is new or previously harvested.

"description": "A large set of tweets related to Super Storm Sandy",
    "isApproved": true,
    "isPublic": false,
    "mediaType": "Social",
    "tags": [
        "twitter",
        "gnip"
    ],
    "title": "Super Storm Sandy - Twitter: SANDY_SUBSTRING",
    "processingPipeline": [
        {
            "file": {
                "XmlPrimaryKey": "link",
                "XmlSourceName": "",
                "XmlRootLevelValues": [],
                "domain": "XXX",
                "password": "XXX",
                "username": "XXX",
                "url": "smb://HOST:139/SHARE/PATH/TO/"
            }
        },

Configuring XML

You can use XmlRootLevelValues to set the root object for xml file parsing.

In the example below, the field "Incident" is set as the root object.

In addition, the parameter XmlIgnoreValues is used to ignore certain xml nodes in the xml document.

XmlPrimaryKey identifies the primary key in the data set, and is use to help identify whether a record is new or previously harvested

XmlSourcename is used to build the new document url of the document that will be generated by the file extraction.

{
    "description": "wits test",
    "isPublic": true,
    "mediaType": "Report",
    "searchCycle_secs": -1,
    "tags": [
        "incidents",
        "nctc",
        "terrorism",
        "wits",
        "events",
        "worldwide"
    ],
    "title": "wits test",
    "processingPipeline": [
        {
            "file": {
                "XmlIgnoreValues": [
                    "DefiningCharacteristicList",
                    "TargetedCharacteristicList",
                    "WeaponTypeList",
                    "PerpetratorList",
                    "VictimList",
                    "EventTypeList",
                    "CityStateProvinceList",
                    "FacilityList"
                ],
                "XmlPrimaryKey": "icn",
                "XmlRootLevelValues": [
                    "Incident"
                ],
                "XmlSourceName": "https://wits.nctc.gov/FederalDiscoverWITS/index.do?N=0&Ntk=ICN&Ntx=mode%20match&Ntt=",
                "domain": "XXX",
                "password": "XXX",
                "username": "XXX",
                "url": "smb://modus:139/wits/allfiles/"
            }
        },

Configuring CSV/SV

There are two options for configuring CSV:

• Specify the field names manually
• Derive the field names from the header

These are described below

Specifying the field names manually

You can use XmlRootLevelValues to set the field names

When you do this, CSV parsing occurs automatically and the records are mapped into a metadata object called "csv" with the field names corresponding to the values of this array.

TODO source example

Deriving Field Names Automatically

The field names can also be derived automatically from the headers.

The field "XmlIgnoreValues" is used to identify the headers - the start of each line is compared to each element in "XmlIgnoreValues", if it matches then that line is designated as a header and does not generate a document.

Furthermore, if the header line contains the right number of fields, then it is used to generate the field names used in the "csv" object.

TODO explanation of using the quote char

Example:

If "XmlIgnoreValues": "#", and the first three lines are "#", "#header", and "#field1,field2,field3" then the processing will assume the 3 fields are field1, field2, and field3.

By default, the matching portion of the line (eg "#" in the example above) is removed.

To not remove it then simple place the value in quotes (using the specified quote char).

eg assuming the quote char is ', then "`#`" in the above example would return 3 fields: "#field1", "field2" and "field3"

TODO insert source example