Create FireFox search plugin for arbitrary web site

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:

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

As an example let's create search plugin for LiveJournal

Search 'searchTerms' using the search form

http://search.livejournal.ru/ljsearch?query=searchTerms&ie=utf-8

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
[download]

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__
[download]

Comment on Create FireFox search plugin for arbitrary web site Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
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	[reply]
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?	[reply]
Re^2: Create FireFox search plugin for arbitrary web site by ccn (Vicar) on Nov 30, 2008 at 00:28 UTC
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` [download] windows: `REM windows batch file perl mksp.pl %1 %2 > PATH\TO\YOUR\PROFILE\searchplugins\%1.xml` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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