How can I add custom search engine to browser?

Question

Basically what I'm trying to do is to be able to add my own "search engine" (based on PHP and Mod_rewrite) to any browser automatically. Somewhere on the Internet I found that I need to declare a search provider. How can I do this? <link>, manifest or some JavaScript?

Answer 1

A couple of steps. First, create an XML file with the information for the search provider. This is an example for Wikipedia: (Named: Wikipedia.xml)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
    <ShortName>Wikipedia</ShortName>
    <Description>Wikipedia Search</Description>
    <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
    <Url type="text/html" template="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title={searchTerms}" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

Then you need to call the Windows method to add it. I do it with a button element like so but you could call the method how ever you prefer.

<input type="button" value="Add Wikipedia Search Provider" onClick='window.external.AddSearchProvider("Wikipedia.xml");'>