Implement the OpenSearch protocol with InstantSearch.js

This project is unrelated to AWS OpenSearch.

This page describes how to implement the OpenSearch protocol with InstantSearch. The OpenSearch protocol lets you describe a search engine for your website, so that browsers or other search clients can use that search engine.

How OpenSearch works

In your website or web application, you include a link to an OpenSearch description document. In this document, you describe how browsers can interact with an underlying search engine. This interaction is based on URL templates, for example, https://mysite.com?q={searchTerms}, which tell browsers how to make a search request. Since the interaction between the browser and search engine is based on a URL, you need to enable URL synchronization.

Create an OpenSearch description document

The OpenSearch description document is an XML file following the OpenSearch specification. For example:

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
  <ShortName>Example Web Search</ShortName>
  <Description>Search example.com content.</Description>
  <Url type="text/html" method="get" template="https://example.com?q={searchTerms}"/>
  <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
  <Image height="32" width="32"type="image/png">linkToImage</Image>
</OpenSearchDescription>

To adapt this example to your website, update these parts:

<ShortName> is the name of your app or website search. It must be 16 or fewer characters.
<Description> is a human readable description of your search engine. It must be 1024 or fewer characters.
<Url> has the template attribute, that browsers use to create the URL to your search engine.
<Image> has a URL (linkToImage) to a PNG image that represents your website, for example, the favicon.

The XML document must be served with Content-Type: application/opensearchdescription+xml media type.

For more information, see OpenSearch description elements.

Include the OpenSearch description document in your website

You can reference the XML document in the <head> of your web pages:

HTML

<link
  rel="search"
  href="/opensearch.xml"
  type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"
  title="Search example.com"
/>

For more information, see Autodiscovery in HTML

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Implement the OpenSearch protocol with InstantSearch.js

How OpenSearch works

Create an OpenSearch description document

Include the OpenSearch description document in your website

​How OpenSearch works

​Create an OpenSearch description document

​Include the OpenSearch description document in your website

How OpenSearch works

Create an OpenSearch description document

Include the OpenSearch description document in your website