Go to URL

This step simply opens a URL. The URL itself can be given as a static value (i.e. it is stored in the connector), or it can be supplied as a parameter, e.g. to make one connector that works with multiple identical-looking sites.

A clever connector-author can also use this function, in conjunction with some of the transformation steps, to construct a search URL directly from a keyword query parameter, or preferably from the fullquery parameter. This is more complicated than using a search form, and it doesn’t always work, but on occasion, it can be used to construct extra efficient connectors.

There is also a checkbox “Load Raw XML”, which causes the step not to open the page the usual way, but to load it into a hidden buffer. This is useful when dealing with web services that return XML instead of the usual HTML. When in the builder, the step still displays the XML document it loads, but when running in the engine, it does not bother, which makes this quite effective. It can also be used for regular HTML pages, but that is a pretty advanced topic.