1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
4 <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9">
5 <TITLE>The DXSpider Installation and Administration Manual : Filtering (Old Style upto v1.44)</TITLE>
6 <LINK HREF="adminmanual-6.html" REL=next>
7 <LINK HREF="adminmanual-4.html" REL=previous>
8 <LINK HREF="adminmanual.html#toc5" REL=contents>
11 <A HREF="adminmanual-6.html">Next</A>
12 <A HREF="adminmanual-4.html">Previous</A>
13 <A HREF="adminmanual.html#toc5">Contents</A>
15 <H2><A NAME="s5">5. Filtering (Old Style upto v1.44)</A></H2>
17 <P>Filters can be set for spots, announcements and WWV. You will find the
18 directories for these under /spider/filter. You will find some examples in
19 the directories with the suffix <EM>.issue</EM>. There are two types of
20 filter, one for incoming information and one for outgoing information.
21 Outgoing filters are in the form <EM>CALLSIGN.pl</EM> and incoming filters
22 are in the form <EM>in_CALLSIGN.pl</EM>. Filters can be set for both nodes
25 <P>All filters work in basically the same way. There are several elements
26 delimited by commas. There can be many lines in the filter and they are
27 read from the top by the program. When writing a filter you need to think
28 carefully about just what you want to achieve. You are either going to write
29 a filter to <EM>accept</EM> or to <EM>reject</EM>. Think of a filter as
30 having 2 main elements. For a reject filter, you would have a line or multiple
31 lines rejecting the things you do not wish to receive and then a default line
32 accepting everything else that is not included in the filter. Likewise, for an
33 accept filter, you would have a line or multiple lines accepting the things you
34 wish to receive and a default line rejecting everthing else.
36 <P>In the example below, a user requires a filter that would only return SSB spots
37 posted in Europe on the HF bands. This is achieved by first rejecting the CW
38 section of each HF band and rejecting all of VHF, UHF etc based on frequency.
39 Secondly, a filter rule is set based on CQ zones to only accept spots posted in
40 Europe. Lastly, a default filter rule is set to reject anything outside the filter.
45 [ 0, 0, 'r', # reject all CW spots
55 30000.0, 49000000000.0,
57 [ 1, 11, 'n', [ 14, 15, 16, 20, 33, ], 15 ], #accept EU
58 [ 0, 0, 'd', 0, 1 ], # 1 = want, 'd' = everything else
63 <P>The actual elements of each filter are described more fully in the following
66 <H2><A NAME="ss5.1">5.1 Spots</A>
69 <P>The elements of the Spot filter are ....
73 [action, field_no, sort, possible_values, hops]
77 <P>There are 3 elements here to look at. Firstly, the action element. This is
78 very simple and only 2 possible states exist, accept (1) or drop (0).
80 <P>The second element is the field_no. There are 13 possiblities to choose from
87 2 = date in unix format
90 5 = spotted dxcc country
91 6 = spotter's dxcc country
97 12 = callsign of the channel on which the spot has appeared
101 <P>The third element tells us what to expect in the fourth element. There are
106 n - numeric list of numbers e.g. [ 1,2,3 ]
107 r - ranges of pairs of numbers e.g. between 2 and 4 or 10 to 17 - [ 2,4, 10,17 ]
108 a - an alphanumeric regex
113 <P>The fifth element is simply the hops to set in this filter. This would only
114 be used if the filter was for a node of course and overrides the hop count in
117 <P>So, let's look at an example spot filter. It does not matter in the example
118 who the filter is to be used for. So, what do we need in the filter? We need
119 to filter the spots the user/node requires and also set a default rule for
120 anything else outside the filter. Below is a simple filter that stops spots
121 arriving from outside Europe.
126 [ 0, 4, 'a', '^(K|N|A|W|VE|VA|J)'], # 0 = drop, 'a' = alphanumeric
127 [ 1, 0, 'd', 0, 1 ], # 1 = want, 'd' = everything else
132 <P>So the filter is wrapped in between a pair of square brackets. This tells
133 Spider to look in between these limits. Then each line is contained within
134 its own square brackets and ends with a comma. Lets look carefully at the first
135 line. The first element is 0 (drop). Therefore anything we put on this line
136 will not be accepted. The next element is 4. This means we are filtering by
137 the spotter. The third element is the letter "a" which tells the program to
138 expect an alphanumeric expression in the fourth element. The fourth element
139 is a list of letters separated by the pipe symbol.
141 <P>What this line does is tell the program to drop any spots posted by anyone in
142 the USA, Canada or Japan.
144 <P>The second line is the default rule for anything else. The "d" tells us this
145 and the line simply reads... accept anything else.
147 <P>You can add as many lines as you need to complete the filter but if there are
148 several lines of the same type it is neater to enclose them all as one line.
149 An example of this is where specific bands are set. We could write this like
154 [ 0,0,'r',[1800.0, 2000.0], 1],
155 [ 0,0,'r',[10100.0, 10150.0], 1],
156 [ 0,0,'r',[14000.0, 14350.0], 1],
157 [ 0,0,'r',[18000.0, 18200.0], 1],
161 <P>But the line below achieves the same thing and is more efficient ....
167 1800.0, 2000.0, # top band
168 10100.0, 10150.0, # WARC
169 14000.0, 14350.0, # 20m
170 18000.0, 18200.0, # WARC
176 <H2><A NAME="ss5.2">5.2 Announcements</A>
183 # This is an example announce or filter allowing only West EU announces
185 # The element list is:-
186 # 0 - callsign of announcer
187 # 1 - destination * = all, <callsign> = routed to the node
189 # 3 - * - sysop, <some text> - special list eg 6MUK, ' ', normal announce
191 # 5 - 0 - announce, 1 - wx
192 # 6 - channel callsign (the interface from which this spot came)
195 [ 1, 0, 'a', '^(P[ABCDE]|DK0WCY|G|M|2|EI|F|ON)' ],
200 <P>In this example, only the prefixes listed will be allowed. It is possible to
201 be quite specific. The Dutch prefix "P" is followed by several secondary
202 identifiers which are allowed. So, in the example, "PA" or "PE" would be ok
203 but not "PG". It is even possible to allow information from a single callsign.
204 In the example this is DK0WCY, to allow the posting of his Aurora Beacon.
206 <H2><A NAME="ss5.3">5.3 WWV</A>
213 # This is an example WWV filter
215 # The element list is:-
216 # 0 - nominal unix date of spot (ie the day + hour:13)
224 # 8 - incoming interface callsign
226 # this one doesn't filter, it just sets the hop count to 6 and is
227 # used mainly just to override any isolation from WWV coming from
236 <P>It should be noted that the filter will start to be used only once a user/node
237 has logged out and back in again.
238 <P>I am not going to spend any more time on these filters now as they will become
239 more "comprehensive" in the near future.
242 <A HREF="adminmanual-6.html">Next</A>
243 <A HREF="adminmanual-4.html">Previous</A>
244 <A HREF="adminmanual.html#toc5">Contents</A>