How to: Programmatically Manage the Crawl of a Content Source

The ContentSource class in the Enterprise Search Administration object model provides several methods you can use to programmatically start, stop, pause, and resume crawls outside of a crawl schedule for a specific content source. You can also use several ContentSource class properties to check the crawl status of a content source.

The steps in the following procedures show how to do the following tasks:

Set up a console application to use the Enterprise Search Administration object model.
Retrieve a specific content source.
Perform various crawl management tasks for that content source.

You can also programmatically configure the crawl schedule for a content source. For more information, see How to: Programmatically Configure a Crawl Schedule for a Content Source.

To set up your application to use the Enterprise Search Administration object model

Set references in your application to the following DLLs:
- Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
- Microsoft.Office.Server.dll
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.dll
In your console application's class file, add the following using statements near the top of the code with the other namespace directives.
```
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration;
```

Create a function to write out usage information to the console window.

private static void Usage()
{
Console.WriteLine("Manage Content Source Crawl Status");
Console.WriteLine("Usage: ManageCrawlStatus.exe <ContentSource>");
Console.WriteLine("<ContentSourceName> - Specify the content source name.");
}

In the Main() function of the console application, add code to check the number of items in the args[] parameter; if it is less than 1, meaning that no value was specified to identify the content source, then call the Usage() function defined in the previous step.
```
if (args.Length < 1 )
{
WriteUsage();
return;
}
```

To retrieve a specific content source

Add the following code to retrieve the Content object for the Shared Services Provider's (SSP) search context:
```
/*
Replace <SiteName> with the name of a site using the SSP
*/
string strURL = "http://<SiteName>";
Content sspContent = new Content(SearchContext.GetContext(new SPSite(strURL)));
```
For more information about ways to retrieve the search context, see How to: Return the Search Context for the Search Service Provider.

Retrieve the collection of content sources.

ContentSourceCollection sspContentSources = sspContent.ContentSources;

Retrieve the value specified in first item of the args[] parameter, which indicates the name of the content source to retrieve.
```
string strContentSourceName = args[0];
```
Retrieve the content source with the specified name from the content source collection.
```
ContentSource cs = sspContentSources[strContentSourceName];
<…>
```

To start an incremental crawl of the content source

Replace the "<…>" placeholder with the following code.
```
cs.StartIncrementalCrawl();
break;
```

To start a full crawl of the content source

Replace the "<…>" placeholder with the following code.
```
cs.StartFullCrawl();
break;
```

To pause a crawl in process

Replace the "<…>" placeholder with the following code.
```
cs.PauseCrawl();
break;
```

To resume a paused crawl

Replace the "<…>" placeholder with the following code.
```
cs.ResumeCrawl();
break;
```

To stop a crawl of the content source

Replace the "<…>" placeholder with the following code.
```
cs.StopCrawl();
break;
```

To check the crawl status values for a content source

There are several crawl status values you can check for a content source, using the properties of the ContentSource object. The following sample shows how to check these properties.

Console.WriteLine("Crawl Status = " + cs.CrawlStatus);
Console.WriteLine("Crawl started at: " + cs.CrawlStarted.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("Crawl completed at: " + cs.CrawlCompleted.ToString());