OpenSearch

Introduction to OpenSearch - OpenSearch is a collection of technologies for publishing search results in a syndication and aggregation format. - It was introduced in 2005 as a way for websites and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format. - OpenSearch was developed by Amazon.com subsidiary A9 and unveiled by Jeff Bezos in March 2005. - The OpenSearch specification is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. - Draft versions of OpenSearch 1.1 were released in September and December 2005. Support for OpenSearch - Web browsers that support OpenSearch include Safari, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Google Chrome. - Mozilla has indicated that they will deprecate OpenSearch search addons in favor of WebExtensions search addons. - As of December 5, 2019, search engine add-ons for Firefox powered by OpenSearch have been removed from Mozilla Add-ons. Design of OpenSearch - OpenSearch consists of OpenSearch Description files, OpenSearch Query Syntax, OpenSearch RSS/Response, OpenSearch Aggregators, and OpenSearch Auto-discovery. - OpenSearch Description Documents list search result responses for the given website/tool. - Version 1.1 of the specification allows for multiple responses in any format, including HTML. - Auto-discovery of an OpenSearch Description Document is available from both HTML and Atom/RSS feed documents. - OpenSearch Description Documents must be served with the application/opensearchdescription+xml Internet media type. Alternatives to OpenSearch - Mozilla Firefox offers a bookmark keyword feature that replaces terms typed in the address bar following the initial keyword. - Sherlock is an alternative software to OpenSearch. Related Concepts - Representational State Transfer (REST) - GraphQL - OpenURL - Search/Retrieve via URL (SRU) - Z39.50