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Create FireFox search plugin for arbitrary web site

by ccn (Vicar)
on Nov 09, 2008 at 14:39 UTC ( [id://722480]=CUFP: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Below is a script which makes a search plugin for arbitrary site.

It can create plugin not only for search engines but for any dynamic site which accepts CGI parameters.

To create search plugin:

  1. Make a search of bareword searchTerms, then copy a url appeared in address bar of a browser
  2. Run the script with that url as parameter
  3. Redirect script output to .xml file in searchplugins directory of your firefox profile

As an example let's create search plugin for LiveJournal

  1. Search 'searchTerms' using the search form
  2. Got url http://search.livejournal.ru/ljsearch?query=searchTerms&ie=utf-8
  3. run the script with url as parameter
    perl mksp.pl Livejournal 'http://search.livejournal.ru/ljsearch?query= +searchTerms&ie=utf-8' > ~/.mozilla/firefox/ze02d000.default/searchplu +gins/lj.xml
  4. restart FireFox and enjoy with blue pen of LiveJournal in search plugins
#!/usr/bin/perl -- use strict; use LWP::Simple; use MIME::Base64 qw(encode_base64); die "Usage: $0 Name 'SearchURLString'\n" if @ARGV < 2; my ($name, $url) = @ARGV; my ($site) = split '(?<![:/])/', $url; my $ico = get($site . '/favicon.ico'); unless ($ico) { $site =~ s{http://[^.]+\.}{http://}; $ico = get($site . '/favicon.ico'); } die "Can't get favicon for $site\n" unless defined $ico; my $base64 = encode_base64($ico); $url =~ s/searchTerms/{searchTerms}/gi; $url =~ s/&(?!amp;)/&amp;/g; print <<END_OF_SEARCHPLUGIN; <SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/" xmlns:os="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"> <os:ShortName>$name</os:ShortName> <os:Description>$name</os:Description> <os:InputEncoding>UTF-8</os:InputEncoding> <os:Image width="16" height="16"> data:image/x-icon;base64,$base64</os:Image> <SearchForm>$site</SearchForm> <os:Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="$url"> </os:Url> </SearchPlugin> END_OF_SEARCHPLUGIN __END__

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Re: Create FireFox search plugin for arbitrary web site
by Lawliet (Curate) on Nov 09, 2008 at 16:54 UTC

    ccn++ # Why didn't I think of this -.-

    I'm so adjective, I verb nouns!

    chomp; # nom nom nom

Re: Create FireFox search plugin for arbitrary web site
by jgamble (Pilgrim) on Nov 29, 2008 at 21:45 UTC

    This is great.

    I wonder if there is some way to automate the output file, instead of having to type the path to the filename explicitly. I believe you can get away with a hardcoded path in Windows, but is it different for Linux?

      Yes, there is. The best way is to make a personal wrapper for the script:

      linux:

      #!/bin/sh perl mksp.pl $1 $2 > ~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILE/searchplugins/$1.x +ml

      windows:

      REM windows batch file perl mksp.pl %1 %2 > PATH\TO\YOUR\PROFILE\searchplugins\%1.xml

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