Login and Logout

Websites support many different ways of logging in and out. Most of these login/logout processes are supported by Watson™ Explorer Engine, but they might require advanced configuration.

Each source has a login/logout section with associated templates. These templates handle the most common ways of processing logins and logouts. When fetching pages sequentially, Watson Explorer Engine maintains cookies in the same way a browser does. Most of the following login/logout processes rely on this property to perform the login/logout: when fetching the pages requested, the remote server can specify cookies that are used to request the subsequent pages.

• URL login: Fetch a URL before retrieving any search result that passes through some HTTP authentication. The HTTP user name and password can be specified by defining user variables for the source, clicking [val], and selecting the variable names from the drop-down list.
• CGI login: Fetch a URL, passing user name and password as CGI parameters before retrieving any search result. The user name and password values can also be specified by defining user variables.
• Page login: Go to a certain page, enter a user name and password into a form, and submit the form. This requires an extra step than the previous login, but might be necessary if a session cookie is set only when the user is loading the login form and not when submitting it.
• Simple logout: Go to a certain URL when the result fetching is over, even if a timeout occurs.

Some sites do not rely on cookies for authentication, but specify a session ID carried on as a CGI parameter. Watson Explorer Engine can comply with this, but direct configuration of the source's XML is required. The page that specifies the session ID must be parsed, and the session ID must be saved in a variable. This variable must be used when submitting the result pages, and therefore needs to be used when defining the form associated with the source. You need a good understanding of Watson Explorer XML to configure this type of authentication correctly.

To proceed with this tutorial, click Miscellaneous.