Is componentpresentation node in Fredhopper proccessed items needed and why?

Question

We have observed that processed items in fredhopper in folder

/fredhopper/data/instances/indexer/data/xml/processed/batch 

have componentpresentation node with entire html of component presentation:

My question is this really necessary? It looks like it's not needed info because FH already have info of all fields, plus component presentation is requested from broker, not from FH. To me this looks like just unnecessary info that is cluttering file system.

Also, if it's not necessary, can it be removed and how? I recall that we excluded some fields from going to FH in smarttarget.conf, so I am interested if similar can be done for component presentation.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The field is a remnant from earlier versions of SmartTarget where you were still using the Business Manager interface. It's basically there to give you an actual preview of the CP in the preview section of Fredhopper.

It is no longer included by default in new installations, but if you upgraded from an older version it continues to do so for backwards-compatibility reasons.

There is a configuration setting to control the inclusion of the field. It is called AddComponentPresentationContent and is in the Deployment section of the configuration file. Set it to false and the Component Presentation data will not be added when you publish in the future.

As mentioned in the 'Adding Experience Optimization to Content Delivery' section of the documentation:

Leave AddComponentPresentationContent set to false unless you have a pressing reason to set it to true. This could be the case if you have upgraded from an older version of SmartTarget, and if you rely on the Component Presentation content being present in Fredhopper as a field.