Back in the days of Web 2.0, before Node.js, before Google Chrome, before Angular and Vue.js, the browser was slowly evolving, and every so often a truly useful feature would show up in the web ecosystem. This was the case of the OpenSearch specification, to allow browsers to search on any website.
Important: I’m not talking about the Elasticsearch fork, but rather, this specification, as explained on Wikipedia.
Sadly, the feature has been somewhat forgotten; thankfully, it is still currently supported by Chrome and Firefox. Let’s revive this feature, shall we?
Enabling
Here’s how to do it:
- Create a file named
opensearchdescription.xmlin the root of a website:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>[Name of the site]</ShortName>
<Description>Search [Name of site]</Description>
<Tags>[Name of site]</Tags>
<Url type="text/html"
template="https://www.example.com/search?q={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
- Add the autodiscovery link in the
<head>of your HTML:
<link rel="search" href="[Absolute URL of the file you just created]"
type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"
title="[Site name]" />
Apparently, the href attribute should be an absolute URL, but at least in the case of Firefox it works with a relative URL "/opensearchdescription.xml", too.
You can see some working examples on this website and on De Programmatica Ipsum.
Chrome Quirks
Chrome (and browsers based thereof) are a bit picky regarding this specification, so please pay attention to the following guidelines:
- The
opensearchdescription.xmlfile must be properly formatted XML, including the<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>declaration at the top. - The
opensearchdescription.xmlfile must be UTF-8 encoded. - The autodiscovery link must appear on the root of the website, otherwise it is ignored. (Source)
- The
hrefattribute of the autodiscovery link must be an absolute URL. - The
<link rel="search">tag must appear before any<script>tags performing redirection (the JavaScript engine in Chrome is that fast; it will redirect before processing the<linktag!)
Configuring
Once your website is deployed with your changes, force-refresh your browser and perform some minor operations.
Firefox & LibreWolf
Firefox will show additional search engines at the bottom of the URL location window when you start typing a URL, with a green “+” sign next to it.
Click on it, and then open the search preferences to assign an optional search prefix by double-clicking on the “Keyword” column.
Chrome & Chromium
Open the search preferences and you will see the newly detected search engine at the bottom of the page; click “Activate”, then (optionally) click the “pencil” button next to it to change the shortcut.
Searching
Hit CTRL+L to select the URL bar, type the chosen prefix, hit the space bar, and type your search term; your browser will redirect you to the search page of your website. Very handy!