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Typical uses for the Ingestion API

A set of backend APIs are provided to take in and process arbitrary document data sent directly to the backend API server. This is generally used for:

  • Creating arbitrary documents that may not exist in any actual sources but contain useful information.
  • Programmatically passing in documents to Danswer. This is sometimes simpler than creating a connector.
  • Editing specific documents in Danswer when the Danswer admin either does not want to or does not have permission to update the original document in the source.
  • Supplementing existing connector functionalities. For example, passing in README file contents and attributing it to the GitHub or GitLab source type.

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Example Document Ingestion

This example creates a new Document in Danswer of the “Web” type. This document will now show up in Danswer’s search flows like any other webpage pulled in by a Web connector.

IngestionPostman

curl --location 'localhost:8080/danswer-api/ingestion' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer dn_qODmg9r8Nl9PR4R9GF_z1UA0smcwVIcj58Ei0zWA' \
--data '{
  "document": {
    "id": "ingestion_document_1",
    "sections": [
      {
        "text": "This is the contents of the document that will be processed and saved into the vector+keyword document index. ",
        "link": "https://docs.danswer.dev/introduction#what-is-danswer"
      },
      {
        "text": "You can include multiple content sections each with their own link or combine them. ",
        "link": "https://docs.danswer.dev/introduction#main-features"
      }
    ],
    "source": "web",
    "semantic_identifier": "Danswer Ingestion Example",
    "metadata": {
        "tag": "informational",
        "topics": ["danswer", "api"]
    },
    "doc_updated_at": "2024-04-25T08:20:00Z"
  },
  "cc_pair_id": 1
}'

Note: The Bearer auth token is generated on server startup in Danswer MIT. There is better API Key support as part of Danswer EE.

See below for a breakdown of the different fields provided:

  • id: this is the unique ID of the document, if a document of this ID exists it will be updated/replaced. If not provided, a document ID is generated from the semantic_identifier field instead and returned in the response.
  • sections: list of sections each containing textual content and an optional link. The document chunking tries to avoid splitting sections internally and favors splitting at section borders. Also the link of the document at query time is the link of the best matched section.
  • source: Source type, full list can be checked by searching for DocumentSource here
  • semantic_identifier: This is the “Title” of the document as shown in the UI (see image below)
  • metadata: Used for the “Tags” feature which is displayed in the UI. The values can be either strings or list of strings
  • doc_updated_at: The time that the document was last considered updated. By default there is a time based score decay around this value when the document is considered during search.
  • cc_pair_id: This is the “Connector” ID seen on the Connector Status pages. For example, if running locally, it might be http://localhost:3000/admin/connector/2. This allows attaching the ingestion doc to existing connectors so they can be assigned to groups or deleted together with the connector. If not provided or set to 1 explicitly, it is considered part of the default catch-all connector.

For even more details, the code for the relevant object is found here, called “DocumentBase”

IngestionUI

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Checking Ingestion Documents

An API is also provided to fetch all of the documents that have been indexed via the Ingestion API IngestionDocs