How to create a "Basic" Windows 7 Search Federation Connector
As some of you may be aware i recently made an "Edugeek Search Federation Connector" so you can search Edugeek.net from your windows desktop enviroment.
Some of you may be wondering how this can be done, so you can maybe use it for your own website.
It's actually very straight forward, you can create 2 types of connectors "basic" or "advanced" the basic connector will just pull back webpages where as the advanced connector will allow you pull back images, videos, documents etc.
To create the Advanced connector your website needs to support "OpenSearch", if you dont have this then you will only be able to create a basic connector which will use a seach API such as BING.
To create your own basic connector open "notepad" and past in the following code
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="https://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="https://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ShortName>My Short Name<ShortName>
<Description>My Web Site via Windows 7 Federated Search</Description>
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="https://api.bing.com/rss.aspx?source=web&query={searchTerms} site:mywebsite.net&web.count=50"/>
<Url type="text/html" template="https://www.bing.com/search?q={searchTerms}+site:mywebsite.net"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
1) Edit the "Short Name"
2) Edit the "Description"
3) Edit the website URL "mywebsite.net"
4) Click File > Save As
5) Change the file type to (All Files)
6) Type in an appropriate name and use the extension .[B]osdx[/B] Example: EdugeekSearchConnector.osdx
Once you have created your connector, right click on the connector file and click "create search connector"
It will then promp and as you weather you would like to proceed, click on ADD and then it will prompt again saying Successful.
So there you go, its not difficault to do its pretty straight forward.
The Advanced Connector does take a little more time as you need to make sure your website will support it, i am just getting all the bits together but when this is complete i will add that to my blog.
James.