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How do you make a new search engine in Google Chrome if the search term has to be a POST variable?

I tried translating the POST data into a GET querystring with the %s placeholder but this didn't work.

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Why don't you use google search api instead ? – ppumkin Jan 23 '12 at 22:00

migrated from stackoverflow.com May 23 '11 at 21:07

3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

I managed to get what I want with this (pretty nasty indeed) workaround: a javascript url that creates and immediatly submits the form. This means, when you define your search engine, insted of an url like this:

http://www.example.com/search?term=%s

you would use this url/code:

javascript:document.write('<form name="f" action="http://www.example.com/search" method="POST"><input type="hidden" name="term" value="%s"></form><script>f.submit();</script>');

Since it'll most likely be a pretty long string it's better to prepare it in a text editor and then copy-paste it in the url field.

This is the search url for an Italian-English dictionary: javascript:document.write('<form name="f" action="http://dizionari.repubblica.it/cgi-bin/inglese/find" method="POST"><input type="hidden" name="lemma" value="%s"><input type="hidden" name="sez" value="ita"></form><script>f.submit();</script>');

P.S. Unfortunately, this method doesn't work when performing search from empty "New Tab" page. This can be fixed by installing "Ultimate New tab" extension.

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up vote 0 down vote

I don't see any other option than creating another webpage, which would accept the search query as GET and then immediately resend it as POST.

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up vote 0 down vote

First you need to host page with this PHP code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <form name="f" action=""<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_GET['action']); ?>" method="POST">
        <input type="hidden" name="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_GET['inputname']); ?>" value=""<?php echo htmlspecialchars($_GET['inputvalue']); ?>">
    </form>
    <script>f.submit();</script>
</body>
</html>

Then put in search url:

http://yourwebsite.com/filename.php?action=http://sitetosearch.com/search.php&inputname=query&inputvalue=%s

(replace urls, filenames and input name to your data)

For example (search on http://fansubs.ru/search.php via host http://webercom.ru/):

http://webercom.ru/post.php?action=http://fansubs.ru/search.php&inputname=query&inputvalue=%
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