Supported features Prerequisites Connection instructions

Amazon Kendra Web Crawler connector v2.0

You can use Amazon Kendra Web Crawler to crawl and index web pages.

You can only crawl public facing websites or internal company websites that use the secure communication protocol Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). If you receive an error when crawling a website, it could be that the website is blocked from crawling. To crawl internal websites, you can set up a web proxy. The web proxy must be public facing. You can also use authentication to access and crawl websites.

Amazon Kendra Web Crawler v2.0 uses the Selenium web crawler package and a Chromium driver. Amazon Kendra automatically updates the version of Selenium and the Chromium driver using Continuous Integration (CI).

When selecting websites to index, you must adhere to the Amazon Acceptable Use Policy and all other Amazon terms. Remember that you must only use Amazon Kendra Web Crawler to index your own web pages, or web pages that you have authorization to index. To learn how to stop Amazon Kendra Web Crawler from indexing your website(s), please see Configuring the robots.txt file for Amazon Kendra Web Crawler.. Abusing Amazon Kendra Web Crawler to aggressively crawl websites or web pages you don't own is not considered acceptable use.

For troubleshooting your Amazon Kendra web crawler data source connector, see Troubleshooting data sources.

Note

Web Crawler connector v2.0 does not support crawling web site lists from AWS KMS encrypted Amazon S3 buckets. It supports only server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed keys.

Important

Web Crawler v2.0 connector creation is not supported by AWS CloudFormation. Use the Web Crawler v1.0 connector if you need AWS CloudFormation support.

Supported features

Field mappings
Inclusion/exclusion filters
Full and incremental content syncs
Web proxy
Basic, NTLM/Kerberos, SAML, and form authentication for your websites
Virtual private cloud (VPC)

Prerequisites

Before you can use Amazon Kendra to index your websites, check the details of your websites and AWS accounts.

For your websites, make sure you have:

Copied the seed or sitemap URLs of the websites you want to index. You can store the URLs in a text file and upload this to an Amazon S3 bucket. Each URL in the text file must be formatted on a separate line. If you want to store your sitemaps in an Amazon S3 bucket, make sure you have copied the sitemap XML and saved this in an XML file. You can also club multiple sitemap XML files into a ZIP file.

Note
(On-premise/server) Amazon Kendra checks if the endpoint information included in AWS Secrets Manager is the same the endpoint information specified in your data source configuration details. This helps protect against the confused deputy problem, which is a security issue where a user doesn’t have permission to perform an action but uses Amazon Kendra as a proxy to access the configured secret and perform the action. If you later change your endpoint information, you must create a new secret to sync this information.
For websites that require basic, NTLM, or Kerberos authentication:
- Noted your website authentication credentials, which include a user name and password.
  
  Note
  Amazon Kendra Web Crawler v2.0 supports the NTLM authentication protocol that includes password hashing, and Kerberos authentication protocol that includes password encryption.
For websites that require SAML or login form authentication:
- Noted your website authentication credentials, which include a user name and password.
- Copied the XPaths (XML Path Language) of the user name field (and the user name button if using SAML), password field and button, and copied the login page URL. You can find the XPaths of elements using your web browser’s developer tools. XPaths usually follow this format: //tagname[@Attribute='Value'].
  
  Note
  Amazon Kendra Web Crawler v2.0 uses a headless Chrome browser and the information from the form to authenticate and authorize access with an OAuth 2.0 protected URL.
Optional: Copied the host name and the port number of the web proxy server if you want to use a web proxy to connect to internal websites you want to crawl. The web proxy must be public facing. Amazon Kendra supports connecting to web proxy servers that are backed by basic authentication or you can connect with no authentication.
Optional: Copied the virtual private cloud (VPC) subnet ID if you want to use a VPC to connect to internal websites you want to crawl. For more information, see Configuring an Amazon VPC.
Checked each web page document you want to index is unique and across other data sources you plan to use for the same index. Each data source that you want to use for an index must not contain the same document across the data sources. Document IDs are global to an index and must be unique per index.

In your AWS account, make sure you have:

Created an Amazon Kendra index and, if using the API, noted the index ID.
Created an IAM role for your data source and, if using the API, noted the Amazon Resource Name of the IAM role.

Note
If you change your authentication type and credentials, you must update your IAM role to access the correct AWS Secrets Manager secret ID.
For websites that require authentication, or if using a web proxy with authentication, stored your authentication credentials in an AWS Secrets Manager secret and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the secret.

Note
We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

If you don't have an existing IAM role or secret, you can use the console to create a new IAM role and Secrets Manager secret when you connect your web crawler data source to Amazon Kendra. If you are using the API, you must provide the ARN of an existing IAM role and Secrets Manager secret, and an index ID.

Connection instructions

To connect Amazon Kendra to your web crawler data source, you must provide the necessary details of your web crawler data source so that Amazon Kendra can access your data. If you have not yet configured web crawler for Amazon Kendra see Prerequisites.

Console

To connect Amazon Kendra to web crawler

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Kendra console.
From the left navigation pane, choose Indexes and then choose the index you want to use from the list of indexes.

Note
You can choose to configure or edit your User access control settings under Index settings.
On the Getting started page, choose Add data source.
On the Add data source page, choose web crawler connector, and then choose Add connector. If using version 2 (if applicable), choose web crawler connector with the "V2.0" tag.
On the Specify data source details page, enter the following information:
1. In Name and description, for Data source name—Enter a name for your data source. You can include hyphens but not spaces.
2. (Optional) Description—Enter an optional description for your data source.
3. In Default language—Choose a language to filter your documents for the index. Unless you specify otherwise, the language defaults to English. Language specified in the document metadata overrides the selected language.
4. In Tags, for Add new tag—Include optional tags to search and filter your resources or track your AWS costs.
5. Choose Next.
On the Define access and security page, enter the following information:
1. Source—Choose either Source URLs, Source sitemaps, Source URLs file, Source sitemaps file. If you choose to use a text file that includes a list of up to 100 seed URLs, you specify the path to the Amazon S3 bucket where your file is stored. If you choose to use a sitemap XML file, you specify the path to the Amazon S3 bucket where your file is stored. You can also club multiple sitemap XML files into a ZIP file. Otherwise, you can manually enter up to 10 seed or starting point URLs, and up to three sitemap URLs.
  
  Note
  If you want to crawl a sitemap, check that the base or root URL is the same as the URLs listed on your sitemap page. For example, if your sitemap URL is https://example.com/sitemap-page.html, the URLs listed on this sitemap page should also use the base URL "https://example.com/".
  
  If your websites require authentication to access the websites, you can choose ether basic, NTLM/Kerberos, SAML, or form authentication. Otherwise, choose the option for no authentication.
  
  Note
  If you want to later edit your data source to change your seed URLs with authentication to sitemaps, you must create a new data source. Amazon Kendra configures the data source using the seed URLs endpoint information in the Secrets Manager secret for authentication, and therefore cannot re-configure the data source when changing to sitemaps.
  1. AWS Secrets Manager secret—If your websites require the same authentication to access the websites, choose an existing secret or create a new Secrets Manager secret to store your website credentials. If you choose to create a new secret, an AWS Secrets Manager secret window opens.
    
    If you chose Basic or NTML/Kerberos authentication, enter a name for the secret, plus the user name and password. NTLM authentication protocol includes password hashing, and Kerberos authentication protocol includes password encryption.
    
    If you chose SAML or Form authentication, enter a name for the secret, plus the user name and password. Use XPath for the user name field (and XPath for the user name button if using SAML). Use XPaths for the password field and button, and login page URL. You can find the XPaths (XML Path Language) of elements using your web browser's developer tools. XPaths usually follow this format: //tagname[@Attribute='Value'].
2. (Optional) Web proxy—Enter the host name and the port number of the proxy sever you want to use to connect to internal websites. For example, the host name of https://a.example.com/page1.html is "a.example.com" and the port number is is 443, the standard port for HTTPS. If web proxy credentials are required to connect to a website host, you can create an AWS Secrets Manager that stores the credentials.
3. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—You can choose to use a VPC. If so, you must add Subnets and VPC security groups.
4. IAM role—Choose an existing IAM role or create a new IAM role to access your repository credentials and index content.
  
  Note
  IAM roles used for indexes cannot be used for data sources. If you are unsure if an existing role is used for an index or FAQ, choose Create a new role to avoid errors.
5. Choose Next.
On the Configure sync settings page, enter the following information:
1. Sync scope—Set limits for crawling web pages including their domains, file sizes and links; and filter URLs using regex patterns.
  1. (Optional) Crawl domain range—Choose whether to crawl website domains only, domains with subdomains, or also crawl other domains that the web pages link to. By default, Amazon Kendra only crawls the domains of the websites you want to crawl.
  2. (Optional) Additional configuration—Set the following settings:
    - Crawl depth—The 'depth' or number of levels from the seed level to crawl. For example, the seed URL page is depth 1 and any hyperlinks on this page that are also crawled are depth 2.
    - Maximum file size—The maximum size in MB of a web page or attachment to crawl.
    - Maximum links per page—The maximum number of URLs on a single webpage to crawl.
    - Maximum throttling of crawling speed—The maximum number of URLs crawled per website host per minute.
    - Files—Choose to crawl files that the web pages link to.
    - Crawl and index URLs—Add regular expression patterns to include or exclude crawling certain URLs, and indexing any hyperlinks on these URL web pages.
2. Sync mode—Choose how you want to update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option.
  - Full sync: Freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.
  - New, modified, deleted sync: Index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.
3. Sync run schedule—For Frequency, choose how often Amazon Kendra will sync with your data source.
4. Choose Next.
On the Set field mappings page, enter the following information:
1. Select from the Amazon Kendra generated default fields of web pages and files that you want to map to your index.
2. Choose Next.
On the Review and create page, check that the information you have entered is correct and then select Add data source. You can also choose to edit your information from this page. Your data source will appear on the Data sources page after the data source has been added successfully.

API

To connect Amazon Kendra to web crawler

You must specify a JSON of the data source schema using the TemplateConfiguration API. You must provide the following information:

Data source—Specify the data source type as WEBCRAWLERV2 when you use the TemplateConfiguration JSON schema. Also specify the data source as TEMPLATE when you call the CreateDataSource API.
URLs—Specify the seed or starting point URLs of the websites or the sitemap URLs of the websites you want to crawl. You can specify the path to an Amazon S3 bucket that stores your list of seed URLs. Each URL in the text file for seed URLs must be formatted on a separate line. You can also specify the path to an Amazon S3 bucket that stores your sitemap XML files. You can club together multiple sitemap files into a ZIP file and store the ZIP file in your Amazon S3 bucket.

Note
If you want to crawl a sitemap, check that the base or root URL is the same as the URLs listed on your sitemap page. For example, if your sitemap URL is https://example.com/sitemap-page.html, the URLs listed on this sitemap page should also use the base URL "https://example.com/".
Sync mode—Specify how Amazon Kendra should update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option. You can choose between:
- FORCED_FULL_CRAWL to freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.
- FULL_CRAWL to index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.
Authentication—If your websites require the same authentication, specify either BasicAuth, NTLM_Kerberos, SAML, or Form authentication. If your websites don't require authentication, specify NoAuthentication.
Secret Amazon Resource Name (ARN)—If your websites require basic, NTLM, or Kerberos authentication, you provide a secret that stores your authentication credentials of your user name and password. You provide the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of an AWS Secrets Manager secret. The secret is stored in a JSON structure with the following keys:
```
{
    "seedUrlsHash": "Hash representation of all seed URLs",
    "userName": "user name",
    "password": "password"
}
```
If your websites require SAML authentication, the secret is stored in a JSON structure with the following keys:
```
{
    "seedUrlsHash": "Hash representation of all seed URLs",                                
    "userName": "user name",
    "password": "password",
    "userNameFieldXpath": "XPath for user name field",
    "userNameButtonXpath": "XPath for user name button",
    "passwordFieldXpath": "XPath for password field",
    "passwordButtonXpath": "XPath for password button",
    "loginPageUrl": "Full URL for website login page"
}
```
If your websites require form authentication, the secret is stored in a JSON structure with the following keys:
```
{
    "seedUrlsHash": "Hash representation of all seed URLs",
    "userName": "user name",
    "password": "password",
    "userNameFieldXpath": "XPath for user name field",
    "passwordFieldXpath": "XPath for password field",
    "passwordButtonXpath": "XPath for password button",
    "loginPageUrl": "Full URL for website login page"
}
```
You can find the XPaths (XML Path Language) of elements using your web browser's developer tools. XPaths usually follow this format: //tagname[@Attribute='Value'].

You can also provide web proxy credentials using and AWS Secrets Manager secret.
IAM role—Specify RoleArn when you call CreateDataSource to provide an IAM role with permissions to access your Secrets Manager secret and to call the required public APIs for the web crawler connector and Amazon Kendra. For more information, see IAM roles for web crawler data sources.

You can also add the following optional features:

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—Specify VpcConfiguration when you call CreateDataSource. For more information, see Configuring Amazon Kendra to use an Amazon VPC.
Domain range—Choose whether to crawl website domains with subdomains only, or also crawl other domains the web pages link to. By default, Amazon Kendra only crawls the domains of the websites you want to crawl.
The 'depth' or number of levels from the seed level to crawl. For example, the seed URL page is depth 1 and any hyperlinks on this page that are also crawled are depth 2.
The maximum number of URLs on a single web page to crawl.
The maximum size in MB of a web page or attachment to crawl.
The maximum number of URLs crawled per website host per minute.
The web proxy host and port number to connect to and crawl internal websites. For example, the host name of https://a.example.com/page1.html is "a.example.com" and the port number is is 443, the standard port for HTTPS. If web proxy credentials are required to connect to a website host, you can create an AWS Secrets Manager that stores the credentials.
Inclusion and exclusion filters—Specify whether to include or exclude crawling certain URLs and indexing any hyperlinks on these URL web pages.

Note
Most data sources use regular expression patterns, which are inclusion or exclusion patterns referred to as filters. If you specify an inclusion filter, only content that matches the inclusion filter is indexed. Any document that doesn’t match the inclusion filter isn’t indexed. If you specify an inclusion and exclusion filter, documents that match the exclusion filter are not indexed, even if they match the inclusion filter.
Field mappings—Choose to map the fields of web pages and web page files to your Amazon Kendra index fields. For more information, see Mapping data source fields.

For a list of other important JSON keys to configure, see Amazon Kendra Web Crawler template schema.

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Document Conventions

Amazon Kendra Web Crawler connector v1.0

Configuring the robots.txt file for Amazon Kendra Web Crawler