66363 - Search plugins don't work with the post method

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Search, defect)

Description

[Erich 'Ricky' Iseli]

In sherlock search plugins, you have the following element

<search
    name="..."
    description="..."
    method="..."   <========
    action="..."
    >

The method usually used is "get" but obviously, "post" should also be possible.
However, if you do that, the plugin won't work at all if you use the web form to
post the search (no results get displayed in the sidebar) or if you type your
search into the sidebar, it will load search.netscape.com instead of the correct
search enginge. Note that Netscape search is used _even_ if the default search
engine is an other one (for example Google).

This prevents you from using sherlock plugins for many search engines that use
the post method (=> severity: major).

The URL above sends you to a testcase. Plugins and a dummy search engine are
available there.

Comment 1

[Robert John Churchill]

Note to matt: 95+% of public search engines out there use HTTP GET...

With the current architecture, there is no easy solution for providing full
support for HTTP POST. Good luck!  (I'd mark this bug as low severity.)

Comment 2

[Paul Chen]

Nice to have, but don't think we'll get to this for beta1. Marking nsbeta1-, future

Comment 3

[Blake Ross]

reassigning matt's old bugs to default owner.

Comment 4

[Thomas Frenzel]

Attachment: mozilla-firefox-1.5.0.4_post-method-search.patch

I made a tiny hack for gentoos mozilla-firefox-1.5.0.4-ebuild, that generates HTTP POST-requests, carrying url-encoded form-data in their body, when the "method"-field within the search plugin src-file is set to "POST".

This is not very pretty, akin the rest of the search-functionality, but seems to do the job.

see also: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138577

Comment 5

[Philip Chee]

Fixed in bug 410613