PowerShell HowTo: Deploying a Custom Indexing Connector to SharePoint - Part 1

Deploying a custom indexing connector in SharePoint requires two steps:

• Adding a protocol used by SharePoint to call into the indexing connector
• Registering the indexing connector with SharePoint

In this post I will show how to accomplish the first step via PowerShell.

Both steps are also described in the MSDN but we go one step further and automate it completely using PowerShell.

Adding protocol and handler to the registry

Based on the protocol of a content source's start address (e.g. http or bdc3) SharePoint decides which indexing connector should crawl it. The protocols known to SharePoint are stored in the Registry on the server where the crawling will take place.

So, the protocol used by our indexing connector also needs to be added to the registry. The following script adds the protocol protocol1:

        
Function RegisterProtocolHandler
{
    param ([string] $protocol)
    
    $path = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ProtocolHandlers\"
    Write-Host "Adding protocol handler to registry: $protocol" 
    # creates the property if not present, otherwise updates it
    Set-ItemProperty -path $path -name $protocol -value "OSearch14.ConnectorProtocolHandler.1" -ErrorAction Stop
    Write-Host -f Green "Successfully added protocol handler to registry: $protocol"
} 

RegisterProtocolHandler -protocol "protocol1" 

If you look at the registry afterwards you will see your protocol among the already registered ones:

HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ProtocolHandlers

But where to get the name of the protocol from in the first place? It has to be included in the documentation of the indexing connector you want to deploy. This is decided by the creator of the indexing connector and could basically be anything like protocol1, abc or helloworld.