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Setting up resolvers for Outbound Feeds

A Resolver is a regular expression pattern that matches a Template to a piece of content before rendering and serving a webpage to the reader. This document guides you through setting up a resolver to use with Outbound Feeds. Take the following steps:

  1. On your Arc XP dashboard, select the outboundfeeds or outboundfeeds-sandbox environment.

  2. Click the outbound feeds tile.

  3. On the top navigation menu, click the Developer Tools tab.

    The Developer Tools submenu displays.

  4. On the Developer Tools submenu, click the Resolvers tab

    The Resolvers Configuration page displays.

  5. Click the New Resolver button.

    The Create Resolver pane opens.

  6. Complete the following fields:

    • Resolver Name: Give the resolver a name.

    • Resolver Priority: An integer value from 1 to 99 that represents how important this configuration is. The lower the value, the higher the priority of the resolver. 10 is a good value to use in case you need to add higher priority resolvers in the future. For example, if you have two RSS resolvers, both with the same regex, but one with a required parameter such as summary=false, you can assign a higher priority (lower value) to the one with the required parameter so it gets evaluated first.

    • Resolver Note: You can add a note to describe what this resolver does or how it differs from other resolvers.

    • Pattern: The regex of the URL(s) for the feed. Consider the following:

      • Outbound Feeds is a separate website that is hosted at https://www.your_website.com/arc/outboundfeeds. All requests start with /arc/outboundfeeds at the beginning of the URI.

      • Take care when creating or modifying resolvers. A mistake in one regex in one resolver can impact your entire Outbound Feeds site. For example, if you create a regex like “feed”, it matches anything that contains the letters “feed”, like /arc/outboundfeeds/rss/ and /arc/outboundfeeds/feed/. Make each regex as specific as possible.

      • If you want to match only your RSS feed: /arc/outboundfeeds/rss, use ^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss$ to match only that URI. The caret ^ symbol specifies the string must start there, to prevent matching in the middle of a string. The dollar $ symbol specifies the string must end there, again preventing matching in the middle of a string.

      • If you want to match /arc/outboundfeeds/rss and /arc/outboundfeeds/rss/, use ^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/?$ to specify it may end with an optional forward slash /. Requests from your origin (CDN) have a forward slash added to them, so adding the forward slash or an optional forward slash and question mark /? is best practice.

      • If you want to add a pattern to the URL, for example, to pass a section in the request, use parentheses: ^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/category/(.*)/?$. If a request is made for /arc/outboundfeeds/rss/category/sports the word sports matches the pattern in parentheses. You can then use the pattern option to pass that value to the content source.

      • You can join multiple regex patterns with the pipe symbol |. If you want to allow filtering by section, author, keywords, and tags, you can join multiple regex terms together, for example:

        ^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/?$|^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/category/(.*)/?$|^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/author/(.*)/?$|^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/keyword/(.*)/?$|^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/tags/(.*)/?$|^/arc/outboundfeeds/rss/tags_slug/(.*)/?$

    • URL Parameters: Add additional parameters to the resolver URL. Consider the following:

      • You can add the size parameter with a value of .* and make it optional

      • You can add the from parameter with a value of .* and make it optional

      • Here is the list of valid URL parameters for Outbound Feeds:

        _id
        body
        branch
        format
        from
        fulltext
        key
        limit
        outputType
        pagebuilder
        published
        revision_id
        size
        slug
        sort
        summary
        token
        url

    • Content source:

      • The standard Content-API source for most feeds is feeds-content-api. Additional content sources are available out-of-the-box. For more information, see Content sources with outbound feeds.

      • The default query is for stories published in the last two days.

      • To override the default query use Include-Terms, Exclude-Terms, and Exclude-Sections. You can use the feeds-content-api content source to search for other types of content, like video or gallery, by changing the query by using the Include-Terms and Exclude-Terms fields.

    • Parameter from the request:

      • If you added any parameters, you should add them here. Leaving the parameter fields empty causes the content source to use its default values, which are listed here:

        • Section : Maps to taxonomy.sections._id. A comma separated list of sections to search for. Each section should start with a slash like /news,/politics. If the included sections aren’t being included as expected, try adding taxonomy.sections to the Source-Include parameter. Section - pattern 1

        • Author: Maps to Credits.By._id. Author - pattern 2

        • Keywords: Maps to taxonomy.seo_keywords. It can be a comma separated list of values. Keywords - pattern 3

        • Tags-Text: Maps to taxonomy.tags.text. It can be a comma separated list of values. Tags-Text - pattern 4

        • Tags-Slug: Maps to taxonomy.tags.slug. Tags-Slug - pattern 5

        • Include-Terms: If you don’t want to use the default query, you can enter a query here. It must be a valid JSON array formatted with ElasticSearch DSL syntax. For more details on custom queries, see How to Create a Custom Query with Outbound Feeds. For example, if the feed uses display date, you can use display_date in the query (and sort by display_date):

          [{"term":{"type":"story"}},{"range":{"display_date":{"gte":"now-2d","lte":"now"}}}]

        • Exclude-Terms: If you need to exclude terms in your query, enter them as an array formatted the same as the Include-Terms. For more details on custom queries, see How to Create a Custom Query with Outbound Feeds. For example, to exclude all content with language “es”, use:

          [{"term":{"language": "es"}}]

        • Exclude-Sections: A comma separated list of sections to exclude. For example /premium,/paid-content. If the excluded sections are not excluded as expected, try adding taxonomy.sections to the Source-Include parameter.

        • Feed-Size: Integer 1 to 100. Defaults to 100. If you added a size URL parameter, select the parameter option, select size, and enter a default value.

        • Feed-Offset: Integer. Defaults to 0. If you add a from URL parameter, select the parameter option, select from, and enter a default value. Offsets cannot be greater than or equal to 10,000.

        • Sort: Comma separated list of fields to sort on. If the feed displays a date, use that date for the sort and the range field in Include-Terms. Defaults to publish_date:desc.

        • Source-Include: Comma-separated list of ANS fields to include in the response from Content API. The content sources use the _sourceIncludes parameter to reduce the response size. They start with the following ANS fields. You can include additional fields to the _sourceIncludes parameter.

        • Source-Exclude: Comma-separated list of ANS fields to exclude from the response. The content sources use the _sourceIncludes parameter to reduce the response size. They start with the following ANS fields. You can exclude fields from that list by adding them to the _sourceIncludes parameter.

        • Sitemap-at-root : Populate this field with true only if you need to convert Section values from dashes to slashes. If you are redirecting Sitemap-section-front-index from root, the generated links look like /sitemap-category-sports-football. The Section pattern is sports-football. Setting this field to true converts the pattern to /sports/football. If you have sections that contain slashes, you must set up separate resolvers to handle those sections.

        • Include-Distributor-Name: If you want content from certain distributors, enter the name or names as a comma-separated list. You can only populate one distributor field.

        • Exclude-Distributor-Name: If you want to exclude content from certain distributors, enter the name or names as a comma-separated list. You can only populate one distributor field.

        • Include-Distributor-Category: If you want content from certain distributor categories, enter the name or names as a comma-separated list. You can only populate one distributor field.

        • Exclude-Distributor-Category: If you want to exclude content from certain distributor categories, enter the name or names as a comma-separated list. You can only populate one distributor field.

        • Default Template: Select a template you created in the outboundfeeds environment.

        • Default output type: Select the output type appropriate for the template, such as xml, json, or text.

        • Content Mapped: Template - leave blank.

  7. Click Save.

View feed output

You have three options to view the feed output:

  • You can see the published feed using the following URL format. This assumes the resolver is for /sitemap:

    • sandbox: https://outboundfeeds-sandbox.{ORG}.arcpublishing.com/pf/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap?_website={websitename}
    • prod: https://outboundfeeds.{ORG}.arcpublishing.com/pf/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap?_website={websitename}

  • You can use the fusion (pf) URL if you are logged in through OKTA.

  • You can use the public URLs:

    • sandbox: https://{ORG}-{WEBSITE}-sandbox.web.arc-cdn.net/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/

    • prod: https://{ORG}-{WEBSITE}-prod.web.arc-cdn.net/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/ (if your site isn’t live yet)

    • prod: https://www.example.com/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/ (if your site is live)

Filter by section

To see a filtered sitemap by section based on taxonomy.sections._id, use:

https://outboundfeeds.{ORG}.arcpublishing.com/pf/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/category/sports?_website={websitename}

Filter by author

To see a filtered sitemap by author based on credits.by._id, use:

https://outboundfeeds.{ORG}.arcpublishing.com/pf/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/author/alexremington?_website={websitename}

Filter by keyword

To see a filtered sitemap by keyword based on taxonomy.seo_keywords, use:

https://outboundfeeds.{ORG}.arcpublishing.com/pf/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/seo_keywords/sports,football?_website={websitename}

Filter by tags

To see a filtered sitemap by tags based on taxonomy.tags.text, use:

https://outboundfeeds.{ORG}.arcpublishing.com/pf/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/tags/nfl,brady?_website={websitename}

Filters by tags-slug

To see a filtered sitemap by tags-slug based on taxonomy.tags.slug, use:

https://outboundfeeds.{ORG}.arcpublishing.com/pf/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap/tags-slug/2020-world-series?_website={websitename}