polliwog User Manual - Configuration

Configuration

The properties.xml file is used to store just about all the configuration information that polliwog uses to process the log. (Note: some configuration information is stored in other files, but the properties.xml points to those files and is basically the central reference point for configuration)

The properties used are not re-iterated here, each property in the properties.xml file contains a description of it's purpose and usage, please see that file for details of the properties. However for advanced configuration information, the Advanced Configuration section.

Note: If you have a specific configuration question then you may find a faster answer by using the How Do I? page.

Note for implementers of custom classes

If you are providing custom implementations of classes, such as the page title resolver, and you have configuration information for your instance then please use the properties.xml file for your properties. This helps to keep configuration information in a single place.

Setting your Time Zone

You must specify your Time Zone for polliwog so that dates/times in the log are converted to your local time. To do this set property:

timeZone

Setting visit timeouts

By default a visit is said to have timed out (i.e. the visitor is no longer actively looking at pages on the site) after 30 minutes. This means that 30 minutes have elapsed since the visitor last looked at a page. After this time a new visit is created.

Two properties control the timeout:

visitTimeout

which should be an integer value.
Property:

visitTimeoutUnits

provides meaning for the visitTimeout value, it should be one of: min, hour, day, sec.

Property Overrides

As of version 0.7 polliwog allows you to override properties specified in the properties.xml file with your own properties (specified in a different properties file).

To set your own properties just set the:

yourProperties

property to a properties file. The properties in that file will then act as overrides of the standard properties. This is most useful when you have your own page title resolution file, page resolution file and hit filter file.

For instance your overrides may look like:

<properties>
  <property id="website"
            type="string">
    <description>The website that the log is for.</description>
    <value>www.mysite.com</value>
  </property>

  <property id="timeZone"
            type="string">
    <description>My timezone. Will shift all dates/times to this timezone before outputting.</description>
    <value>Australia/Brisbane</value>
  </property>

  <property id="geoipLocationsFile"
            type="file"
            exists="true">
    <description>The location of the GeoIP file, this one contains the city/town information.</description>
    <value>/home/me/polliwog/GeoIP.dat</value>
  </property>

  <property id="basicHitFilterRulesFile"
            type="file"
            exists="true">
    <description>The file used to configure the rules used by the BasicHitFilter class.</description>
    <value>/home/me/polliwog/hit-filter-config.xml</value>
  </property>
  
  <property id="basicPageResolverFile"
            type="file"
            exists="true">
    <description>The file used to configure the JoSQL WHERE clause used by the BasicPageTitleResolver.</description>
    <value>/home/me/polliwog/page-resolver.xml</value>
  </property>
  
  <property id="basicSiteAreaResolverFile"
            type="file"
            exists="true">
    <description>The file used to map the hit to a site area, used by class: org.polliwog.resolvers.BasicSiteAreaResolver.</description>
    <value>/home/me/polliwog/site-area-config.xml</value>
  </property>
  
</properties>

You would then specify this file in the properties.xml file as:

<properties>
  <property id="yourProperties"
            type="file"
            exists="false">
    <description>My override properties.</description>
    <value>/home/me/polliwog/my-properties.xml</value>
  </property>

  <!--
    Other properties removed for brevity!
  -->
</properties>

Advanced Configuration

This section covers some of the more advanced configuration that you may wish to use with polliwog.

Compress generated HTML files

polliwog can produce a lot of information which can take time to download, if served over the Internet. To compress the HTML files produced set property:

gzipOutputHTMLFiles

to true.

Don't produce per-visit pages

By default, polliwog will produce a HTML page per visit detailing what the visitor viewed. To not produce these files set property:

wantVisitPages

to false.

Hide visitor IP addresses

If you are serving the HTML pages produced by polliwog over the Internet or they are available to the public then it is a good idea to hide the IP addresses that your visitors have (for privacy purposes). To do this set property:

hideVisitorIPAddress

to true. Note: by default polliwog will display visitor IP addresses.

Resolve IP addresses into hostnames

Note: it is NOT recommended that you perform IP address resolution. The DNS lookups required will mean that processing a log file will literally take hours!

To resolve IP addresses into hostnames set property:

resolveHostnames

to true.