search api

OpenSearch In A Nutshell

OpenSearch is a standard way of querying a database for content and returning the results. The official docs note simply: “Any website that has a search feature can make their results available in OpenSearch format,” then adds: “Publishing your search results in OpenSearch™ format will draw more people to your content, by exposing it to […] » about 300 words

All About OpenSearch and Autodiscovery from Davey P

I’ve been meaning to point out (and steal from) Dave Pattern’s post on tipping off IE7 (and other browsers soon too, hopefully) to available OpenSearch targets for some time now. I haven’t had time to do the stealing, so I’ll have to settle for pointing it out while it’s still news.

What’s the trick? As Dave explains, you put a link in the <head> section of your pages like this:

<link rel=“search”<br />      type=“application/opensearchdescription+xml”<br />      title=“WPopac Demo”<br />      href=“http://www.plymouth.edu/library/opac/opensearch.xml” />

When IE7 finds that, it’ll offer you a chance to add the new search target. The screenshots at Dave’s site show the whole thing.