Searching DevCentral Just Got Easier

I recently received an internal iRule email and one of our folks created a search provider for FireFox to search DevCentral.  Lori quickly responded and asked if we could get this posted to DevCentral.  Why not if it will help the community so I took a look.  Then it occurred to me that a while back I created a search provider definition based on the OpenSearch specification.  For some reason, on our last site refresh, the links in our website were removed so the browser didn’t natively pick them up.   I fixed that so now you can add DevCentral as a native search target in your browser of choice.

Here’s a little background on OpenSearch, how I implemented it on DevCentral, and how to set it up in your browser.

OpenSearch

OpenSearch is a format that can be used to describe a search engine so that it can be accessed and used by search client applications such as web browsers.  It’s basically just an XML file that you put on your webserver and by adding a hidden tag in your application pages, a browser is able to automatically access the search pages on your site.

Creating the Search Engine

The first step is to create the search engine definition file.  In this case, I called that file OpenSearch.xml.  The format for that file is defined here.  For DevCentral, you can view the definition directly at OpenSearch.xml.