The hosts.xml file is an XML file on the local client computer, which contains the information about all available censhare Application Servers (= host) and their connection parameters.
A typical host entry looks like this:
<host name="Server-Name" authentication-method="" compressionlevel="0" url="//192.168.1.4/corpus.RMIServer"> <proxy use="0"/> <censhare-vfs use="1" hidden="1"/> </host>
The possible parameters of the hosts-entries and their meanings are explained in full detail in the article Client-server communication customization.
The hosts.xml file can be edited in two ways:
directly, by opening the file in a text or XML editor. There is no DTD for validation, so special care is required to keep the file valid. The hosts.xml file can be found in the local censhare preferences folder (the location depends on the operating system) in the v4 subfolder.
per user interface dialog from the server preferences menu of the censhare clients.
If a hosts.xml file is used to store access data for a large collection of hosts, groups of hosts can be visualized by divding them with a dummy host entry which creates a separator line:
<host name="-------------------------" url="//separator/corpus.RMIServer" compressionlevel="0" authentication-method=""> <proxy use="0"/> </host>
It will be necessary to make this adjustments directly in the hosts.xml file, as the entries can not be re-ordered within the user interface dialog from the server preferences menu of the censhare clients.
The hosts.xml file can be created once and then distributed among all client computers, if desired.