OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow the publishing of search results in a format suitable for

syndication Syndication may refer to: * Broadcast syndication, where individual stations buy programs outside the network system * Print syndication, where individual newspapers or magazines license news articles, columns, or comic strips * Web syndication, ...

and aggregation. Introduced in 2005, it is a way for

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

s and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format. OpenSearch was developed by

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...

subsidiary A9 and the first version, OpenSearch 1.0, was unveiled by

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...

at the ''O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference'' on 15 March 2005. Draft versions of OpenSearch 1.1 were released during September and December 2005. The OpenSearch specification is licensed by A9 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Support

Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

s that support OpenSearch include Safari,

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

and Google Chrome. Mozilla have indicated that they will deprecate OpenSearch search addons in favour of WebExtensions search addons. This will not affect the ability to manually add an opensearch engine from a website As of December 5, 2019, search engine add-ons for Firefox that are powered by OpenSearch have been removed from Mozilla Add-ons.

Design

OpenSearch consists of: # OpenSearch Description files:

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

files that identify and describe a search engine. # OpenSearch Query Syntax: describe where to retrieve the search results # OpenSearch RSS (in OpenSearch 1.0) or OpenSearch Response (in OpenSearch 1.1): format for providing open search results. # OpenSearch Aggregators: Sites that can display OpenSearch results. # OpenSearch "Auto-discovery" to signal the presence of a search plugin link to the user and the link embedded in the header of HTML pages OpenSearch Description Documents list search result responses for the given website/tool. Version 1.0 of the specification only allowed one response, in RSS format; however, version 1.1 provides support for multiple responses, which may be in any format. RSS and

Atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...

are the only ones formally supported by OpenSearch aggregators, however other types, such as

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

are perfectly acceptable. * Auto-discovery of an OpenSearch Description Document is available from both HTML and Atom or RSS feed documents via Link relations in the form of for Atom feeds or for RSS feeds and HTML documents. * OpenSearch Description Document must be placed on a web server of the same domain. * OpenSearch Description Documents must be served with the application/opensearchdescription+xml Internet media type.

Alternatives

Mozilla Firefox offers a bookmark keyword feature where an occurrence of in the bookmark URI gets replaced with the terms typed in the address bar following the initial keyword. *

Sherlock (software) Sherlock, named after fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, was a file and web search tool created by Apple Inc. for the PowerPC-based "classic" Mac OS, introduced with Mac OS 8 as an extension of the Mac OS Finder's file searching capabiliti ...

References

External links

* , including specifications
Mycroft Project
– a collection of OpenSearch installers for Firefox {{web browsers Internet search engines Web syndication formats XML Open formats 2005 software

Support

Design

Alternatives

See also

References

External links