This tutorial explain the approach to enable Geo Location based redirects with CloudFront and Apache.

Geo IP based redirection

Geo IP based redirection is the process of automatically redirecting a website visitor by their geolocation.

There are multiple options to enable the location based redirects in Apache, one of the option is using Geo IP database like MaxMind Geo IP database to map users’s IP to their location. Maxmind Geo IP database can be enabled through Apache module.

If you are using any of the CDN e.g CloudFront provides specific headers with request location, CloudFront will detect the user’s country of origin and pass along the county code to origin server in the CloudFront-Viewer-Country header. You can use this information to customize your responses e.g redirecting the users to specific URL based on origin country.

Prerequisites

Website enabled with CloudFront CDN and Apache

CloudFront Configurations

As a first step white list the CloudFront-Viewer-Country header in Cloudfront distribution

Access <<CloudFront Distribution>> →Behaviors → <<Specific Behavior>>

Edit the behavior

Whitelist CloudFront-Viewer-Country header — the header with user’s country of origin will be sent to origin server(Apache) on every request.

CloudFront-Viewer-Country header will have the two letter country code based on the request origin.

Enable Apache Redirect

Let us now enable the required redirect configuration to virtualhost, add the below redirect rules to enable the the country specific redirects

<VirtualHost *:80>
 
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot "C:\opt\communique\dispatcher\cache"
    ServerName test.albinsblog.com
    ServerAlias localhost
 
    RewriteEngine On
 
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/content/we-retail.html
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:CLOUDFRONT-VIEWER-COUNTRY} ^US$
    RewriteRule ^.*$ https://test.albinsblog.com/content/we-retail/us/en.html [R=302,L]    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/content/we-retail.html
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:CLOUDFRONT-VIEWER-COUNTRY} ^IT$
    RewriteRule ^.*$  https://test.albinsblog.com/content/we-retail/it/it.html [R=302,L]    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/content/we-retail.html
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:CLOUDFRONT-VIEWER-COUNTRY} ^CA
    RewriteRule ^.*$ https://test.albinsblog.com/content/we-retail/ca/en.html [R=302,L]    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/content/we-retail.html
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:CLOUDFRONT-VIEWER-COUNTRY} ^FR$
    RewriteRule ^.*$ https://test.albinsblog.com/content/we-retail/fr/fr.html [R=302,L]    <Directory />  
       Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes     
       # Set includes to process .html files
       AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html
       AddOutputFilterByType INCLUDES text/html
       AllowOverride None
    </Directory>
 
</VirtualHost>

I am using some VPN tool to initiate the connection from different origin country.

Connected the VPN to Canada

Now the user is redirected to Canada specific URL

The user is redirected to the country specific URL based on the users country of origin, CloudFront will detect the user’s country of origin and pass along the county code to origin server(Apache) in the CloudFront-Viewer-Country header. The Apache server redirect the user to the country specific URL’s based on the country code values in CloudFront-Viewer-Country header.

Dynamic Facets

The dynamic facet is used to create new range selections automatically at the time of search. The facets are included dynamically based on the search result.

The Dynamic Facets feature is not enabled in Adobe Search&Promote, by default. Contact Technical Support to activate the feature for your use.

In our previous tutorial, we have seen how to enable static facet for the search results. Refer the below link for the details, the steps are going to be same for Dynamic facet with small changes.

Facets that are sparsely populated across your website and only appear for a subset of searches are good candidates to make dynamic.

In our example, the product with type “Watch” will have an additional attribute with name “size” and the facet associated with “size” is applicable only for the searches with keyword “Watch”.

The search with key word “Watch” will shows two facets “productType”(static) and “size”(dynamic) but the search with “Book” will shows only “productType”(static) facet.

Configuring Dynamic Facet

Some additional configuration required to enable Dynamic Facet compared to Static Facet(Refer Static facet tutorial for basic configurations)

Enabled additional product attribute to the feed file based on the product Type — “size”, “size” attribute is applicable only for the productType “Watch”

<feed xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" version="2.0">
 <channel>
  <title>Product Feed</title>
  <Item>
   <link>https://www.example.com/product-title/p/prod1</link>
   <title>
   <![CDATA[Book Prod1 Title]]>
   </title>
   <description>
   <![CDATA[<p>Prod1 description</p>]]>
   </description>
   <productType>Book</productType>
   <ProductId>prod1</ProductId>
   <imageUrl>/content/dam/Images/product/prod1.jpg</imageUrl>
  </Item>
  <Item>
   <link>https://www.example.com/product-title/p/prod2</link> 
   <title>
   <![CDATA[Book Prod2 title]]>
   </title>
   <description>
   <![CDATA[<p>Prod2 description</p>]]>
   </description>
   <productType>Book</productType>
   <ProductId>prod2</ProductId>
   <imageUrl>/content/dam/Images/product/prod2.jpg</imageUrl>
  </Item><Item>
   <link>https://www.example.com/product-title/p/prod3</link>
   <title>
   <![CDATA[Watch Prod3 Title]]>
   </title>
   <description>
   <![CDATA[<p>Prod3 description</p>]]>
   </description>
   <productType>Watch</productType>
    <size>10</size>
   <ProductId>prod3</ProductId>
   <imageUrl>/content/dam/Images/product/prod3.jpg</imageUrl>
  </Item>
  <Item>
   <link>https://www.example.com/product-title/p/prod4</link>
   <title>
   <![CDATA[Watch Prod4 Title]]>
   </title>
   <description>
   <![CDATA[<p>Prod4 description</p>]]>
   </description>
   <productType>Watch</productType>
    <size>20</size>
   <ProductId>prod4</ProductId>
   <imageUrl>/content/dam/Images/product/prod4.jpg</imageUrl>
  </Item>
  </channel>
</feed>

Create a new meta data definition for “size” field, Settings → Metadata →Definitions

Enable Dynamic Facet option for the metadata

Update the IndexConnector configurations with new meta data field “size”, Settings → Crawling →Index Connector

Configure facet with name “size” — there is no “Dynamic Facet” setting in Facet, only the configuration is in the underlying metadata configuration(already enabled), Design →Navigation →Facets

Configure a new Query Cleaning rule, Rules → Query Cleaning , to set the backend parameter “sp_sfvl_df_count”, the sp_sfvl_df_count parameter
determines the total number of dynamic facet fields to return.

Update the back end transport with Dynamic Facet Support

<search-content-type-header charset="UTF-8">
{ 
	"general": {
        "query" : "<search-query />",		
        "total" : "<search-total />",
        "lower" : "<search-lower />",
        "upper" : "<search-upper />"

	},
	"facets" : [
        {
            "name" : "productType",
            "values" : [<search-field-value-list name="productType" quotes="yes"  data="values" sortby="values" encoding="json" />],
            "counts" : [<search-field-value-list name="productType" quotes="no"  data="results" sortby="values" />]
        }<search-dynamic-facet-fields>,
        {
            "name" : "<search-dynamic-facet-field-name>",
            "dynamic-facet" : 1,
            "values" : 
                    [<search-field-value-list quotes="yes" commas="yes" data="values" sortby="values" encoding="json" />],
                    "counts" : [<search-field-value-list quotes="yes" commas="yes" data="results" sortby="values" />]
        }</search-dynamic-facet-fields>
    ],

	"results" : [
		<search-results>
		{
			"fields" :
			[
				{
					"name" : "mdi",
					"value" : "<search-display-field name="mdi" length="500"  encoding="json" />"
				},

				{
					"name" : "title",
					"value" : "<search-display-field name="title" encoding="json" />"
				},
				{
					"name" : "productType",
					"value" : "<search-display-field name="productType" encoding="json" />"
				},
				{
					"name" : "size",
					"value" : "<search-display-field name="size" encoding="json" />"
				}
            ]		
        } 
        <search-if-not-last>,</search-if-not-last>
		</search-results>
	]
}

The configurations are ready, let us now run a Stage indexing (note the configuration are not pushed to live yet)

Index →Full Index →Staged Index →Run Full Index

Access http://stage-xxxxxxxxxxx.guided.ss-omtrdc.net/do=json&sp_staged=1&sp_q=Watch

xxxxxxxxxxx — Search and Promote account number

This will respond with JSON data which contains the required Static, Dynamic facet and meta data details.

{
  "general": {
    "query": "",
    "total": "2",
    "page_lower": "1",
    "page_upper": "2",
    "page_total": "1"
  },
  "facets": [
    {
      "label": "productType",
      "long": false,
      "values": [
        {
          "value": "Watch",
          "selected": "false",
          "count": "2",
          "link": "?do=json;i=1;q1=Watch;sp_q=Watch;sp_staged=1;x1=productType",
          "undolink": "",
          "threshold": false
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "label": "size",
      "long": false,
      "values": [
        {
          "value": "10",
          "selected": "false",
          "count": "1",
          "link": "?do=json;i=1;q1=10;sp_q=Watch;sp_staged=1;x1=size",
          "undolink": "",
          "threshold": false
        },
        {
          "value": "20",
          "selected": "false",
          "count": "1",
          "link": "?do=json;i=1;q1=20;sp_q=Watch;sp_staged=1;x1=size",
          "undolink": "",
          "threshold": false
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "results": [
    {
      "index": "",
      "title": "Watch Prod3 Title",
      "productType": "Watch",
      "size": "10"
    },
    {
      "index": "",
      "title": "Watch Prod4 Title",
      "productType": "Watch",
      "size": "20"
    }
  ]
}

The configuration can be pushed live after successful validation and run a live index →Full Index →Live Index →Run Full Index

The URL to access live data http://xxxxxxxxxxx.guided.ss-omtrdc.net/do=json&sp_q=Watch

The facet data in the response can be used to present the filtering options to users to narrow down the website search. The Dynamic Facet option enables the facets based on the search data.