Filters

Filters have been introduced to allow you to exclude files when spidering or importing files. Rapid Sitemaps will compare the full path of each file found by a spider against each filter in the list in order, from first to last. As soon as one filter matches, its action is taken, and no other filters are checked for this file.

Types

There are two types of filter wildcard filters and regular expression filters.

Wildcard Filters

These filters allow you to replace one or many characters with wildcards, which represent any character. Rapid Sitemaps uses a pipe character '|' to represent a single character, and an asterisk '*' to represent any number of characters (including zero). Wildcard filters are not case-sensitive.

Wildcard filters compare against the entire file name, not just any part of it. This means that a filter ".htm" will only match a file named .htm, but not index.htm. You need to use "*.htm" to match all .htm files.

Regular Expression Filters

These filters use Microsoft's advanced regular expression engine to match filenames to your filters. Regular expressions are a language in themselves, so we won't explain how to use them here, except to direct you to a couple of websites with tutorials.

Rapid Sitemaps regular expression filters are case-sensitive, unless you specifically include the case-insensitive flag (i) in your regular expression.

http://www.regular-expressions.info/

Microsoft Software Developer Network - Regular Expressions

Action

Select whether to include or exclude any files that match this filter. Use this feature, along with correct ordering of your filters, to include specific files that would otherwise be excluded by other filters. For example, to only include the index.htm file of the help folder, but exclude all other files in the help folder, you might use two filters like these:

Filter

Enter the actual filter expression here.

Comment

Filter expressions, especially regular expressions, can be very confusing to read, so Rapid Sitemaps allows you to enter a comment for each filter, so that you can more easily identify what each filter does.

Managing Your Filters

To add a new filter, simply fill in the form, and click "Add". A new filter will be added to the list.

To edit an existing filter, select the filter from the list, and click "Edit". This will populate the form with the values for this filter. Simply edit these values and click "Update". If you don't wish to make any changes, click "Cancel".

To delete an existing filter, select the filter and click "Delete"

To change the order of the filters, select the filter you wish to move, and click "Move Up" or "Move Down" to move it.

Loading and Saving Your Filters

Rapid Sitemaps does not remember your filters between sessions, so you need to save them. This allows you to keep different filters for different sites. Simply click the Save Filter button, and select where you would like to save the filter.

To load an existing filter, click Load Filter, and select the filter file to open.

options - file extensions

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