Configuration Files

Table of Contents

Configuration files

Configuration files

You can find the configuration files in conf/ in the code editor, or in src/main/resources/conf/ in the project directory. The configuration files are organized by function or by module, as follows:

/conf
	/activity
	/message
	/platforms
	/processors
	/security
	/services

These configuration files support hierarchical cascading of the files via the open-source Fig project.

This section describes the most important configuration files in the /config folder:

config/twigkit.conf

Global configuration settings.
config/cors.conf

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) configuration.
config/platforms/fusion/fusion.conf

Specify Fusion platform settings.
config/platforms/fusion/data.conf

Specify which Fusion query profile to use.
config/security/fusion.conf

Configure the Fusion security realm.

`config/twigkit.conf`

The App Studio application looks up global settings from a twigkit.conf configuration file that the application tries to locate relative to config on the runtime classpath.

Parameter Type Description

Parameter	Type	Description
`license-file`	`string`	The path to the license file relative to the `app-studio/` directory, such as `file://./twigkit.lic`.
`ui.trim-white-space`	`string`	"True" to trim white space in the application UI.
`bundleTimeToLive`	`long`	The number of milliseconds a resource bundle (for example, a file like `languages_en.properties`), can remain in the Java resource bundle cache without being validated against the source file from which it was constructed. The value 0 indicates that a bundle must be validated each time it is retrieved from the cache. If `bundleTimeToLive` is negative, or missing, then the bundle cache will have no expiration control (i.e. entries are only evicted from cache due to runtime or memory constraints).

license-file

string

The path to the license file relative to the app-studio/ directory, such as file://./twigkit.lic.

ui.trim-white-space

string

"True" to trim white space in the application UI.

bundleTimeToLive

long

The number of milliseconds a resource bundle (for example, a file like languages_en.properties), can remain in the Java resource bundle cache without being validated against the source file from which it was constructed. The value 0 indicates that a bundle must be validated each time it is retrieved from the cache. If bundleTimeToLive is negative, or missing, then the bundle cache will have no expiration control (i.e. entries are only evicted from cache due to runtime or memory constraints).

`config/cors.conf`

CORS or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing is a recent W3C effort to introduce a standard mechanism for enabling cross-domain requests from web browsers to servers that wish to handle them. App Studio supports CORS filtering by default. You can control the options for the particular header attributes using the cors.conf file at the root of the /conf folder.

Parameter Type Description Default

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
`cors.allowOrigin`	`string`	Whitespace-separated list of origins that the CORS filter must allow. Requests from origins not included here will be refused with an HTTP 403 "Forbidden" response. If set to `*` (asterisk), any origin is allowed.	`*`
`cors.supportedMethods`	`string`	List of the supported HTTP methods. These are advertized through the Access-Control-Allow-Methods header and must also be implemented by the actual CORS web service. Requests for methods not included here will be refused by the CORS filter with an HTTP 405 "Method not allowed" response.	`GET, POST, DELETE, HEAD`
`cors.supportsCredentials`	`boolean`	Indicates whether user credentials, such as cookies, HTTP authentication or client-side certificates, are supported. The CORS filter uses this value in constructing the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header.	`false`
`cors.maxAge`	`integer`	Indicates how long the results of a preflight request can be cached by the web browser, in seconds. If -1 unspecified. This information is passed to the browser via the Access-Control-Max-Age header.	`3600`

cors.allowOrigin

string

Whitespace-separated list of origins that the CORS filter must allow. Requests from origins not included here will be refused with an HTTP 403 "Forbidden" response. If set to * (asterisk), any origin is allowed.

*

cors.supportedMethods

string

List of the supported HTTP methods. These are advertized through the Access-Control-Allow-Methods header and must also be implemented by the actual CORS web service. Requests for methods not included here will be refused by the CORS filter with an HTTP 405 "Method not allowed" response.

GET, POST, DELETE, HEAD

cors.supportsCredentials

boolean

Indicates whether user credentials, such as cookies, HTTP authentication or client-side certificates, are supported. The CORS filter uses this value in constructing the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header.

false

cors.maxAge

integer

Indicates how long the results of a preflight request can be cached by the web browser, in seconds. If -1 unspecified. This information is passed to the browser via the Access-Control-Max-Age header.

3600

Hierarchical configuration

To make version control and specialization of configuration easier, the configuration is loaded hierarchically. For example, in the /platforms directory are subdirectories for /fusion and /solr:

/config
	/platforms
		/fusion
		/solr

Within the /fusion folder is /fusion/fusion.conf, which may contain the following general attributes:

name: twigkit.search.fusion.Fusion
backwardsCompatible: true
timeOut: 30000
resultIDField: id
highlight: true
defaultQuery: *:*

Within the same folder, you might find one or more configuration files which inherit or extend this one, such as data.conf or people.conf. To access a given configuration, use dot notation, such as platforms.fusion.data or platforms.fusion.people. The configuration system will traverse the hierarchy (no matter how deep) and aggregate the configuration files, overwriting attributes from higher-level files when those attributes also appear in lower-level files.

For example, if fusion.conf contains a defaultQuery attribute and you create internal.conf which also contains a defaultQuery, then the value from internal.conf is used. This allows you to create variations on the same platform configuration. You can then refer to any platform instance in other configuration files or in the search:platform tag:

<search:platform conf="platforms.fusion.internal" />

In this case App Studio will use the platform as configured centrally, irrespective of the search engine behind it, effectively abstracting the data provider from the view.

Configuration locations

The configuration files can be placed outside of the application and centrally accessed by multiple instances. To reference these in a different location, set the twigkit.conf system property to the absolute file path of the /conf folder, like this:

-Dtwigkit.conf=file://${path-to-your-conf-folder}

Adding special characters to key names in configuration files

To add special characters to key names in configuration files you need to escape the special characters. For example, if a key name contained a whitespace, such as My key: value then you would need to escape the whitespace for the configuration to be correctly loaded. In this case, the correct syntax would be:

My key: value

This rule does not just apply to whitespace but any special character that you may wish to use within a key name.

Cookies

AppKit uses three cookies: JSESSIONID for authentication, and tk.query.ctx_null and tk.session to track session metadata.

JSESSIONID is used by Spring Security for authentication and to maintain the session for the user
tk.query.ctx_null stores the current query term to track whether the query is refined
appkitRequestCookie is used to prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) when using social features