+ +
+

Running shell commands to fetch results

+

Previously, with searx you could search over the Internet on other people’s +computers. Now it is possible to fetch results from your local machine without +connecting to any networks from the same graphical user interface.

+
+

Command line engines

+

In PR 2128 a new type of engine has been introduced called command. +This engine lets administrators add engines which run arbitrary shell commands +and show its output on the web UI of searx.

+

When creating and enabling a command engine on a public searx instance, +you must be careful to avoid leaking private data. The easiest solution +is to add tokens to the engine. Thus, only those who have the appropriate token +can retrieve results from the it.

+

The engine base is flexible. Only your imagination can limit the power of this engine. (And +maybe security concerns.) The following options are available:

+
    +

  • command: A comma separated list of the elements of the command. A special token {{QUERY}} tells searx where to put the search terms of the user. Example: ['ls', '-l', '-h', '{{QUERY}}']

    • +

  • delimiter: A dict containing a delimiter char and the “titles” of each element in keys.

    • +

  • parse_regex: A dict containing the regular expressions for each result key.

    • +

  • query_type: The expected type of user search terms. Possible values: path and enum. path checks if the uesr provided path is inside the working directory. If not the query is not executed. enum is a list of allowed search terms. If the user submits something which is not included in the list, the query returns an error.

    • +

  • query_enum: A list containing allowed search terms if query_type is set to enum.

    • +

  • working_dir: The directory where the command has to be executed. Default: .

    • +

  • result_separator: The character that separates results. Default: \n

    • +
+

The example engine below can be used to find files with a specific name in the configured +working directory.

+
- name: find
+  engine: command
+  command: ['find', '.', '-name', '{{QUERY}}']
+  query_type: path
+  shortcut: fnd
+  delimiter:
+      chars: ' '
+      keys: ['line']
+
+
+
+
+

Next steps

+

In the next milestone, support for local search engines and indexers (e.g. Elasticsearch) +are going to be added. This way, you will be able to query your own databases/indexers.

+
+
+

Acknowledgement

+

This development was sponsored by Search and Discovery Fund of NLnet Foundation .

+
+
Happy hacking.
+
kvch // 2020.09.28 21:26
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