Webinator MetaSearch

[Thunderstone]

Hi,

Following question:

I set up the webinator / texis metasearch demo as featured on the web site.
I have now amended the meta file to incorporate different search engines
than the first one and renamed it meta2.

I want to display a hyperlink at the end of the meta results, passing
the same query term to the meta2-file to be processed with different engines.

How can I pass the query term from the results of the first meta to the meta2
routine ? I tried something like:

a
href="http://www.freibier.com/cgi-bin/texis/w ... uery=xyzzy


a
href="http://www.freibier.com/cgi-bin/texis/w ... tml?query=%
xyzzy%

and similar, but the script failed to replace my xyzzy term with the search
query.

Whats the right syntax here ?

Any thoughts ?

Thanks,


Robert

[Thunderstone]

The magic xyzzy string is specific to that application, not the language.
It's in the urls to submit to other sites and gets replaced with the
user's query at run time via <sandr>.

You could use the same approach with your own meta2 url, but it would be better
to just supply the variable directly:
<fmt '<a href="/cgi-bin/texis/webinator/meta/?q=%U">More...</a>' $q>

The best way would be to call yourself with an exported variable.

...
<export $q>
...
<a href="$url/meta2.html">More...</a>
...

Then add a meta2 function to handle the second set of urls.
That will allow you reuse much of the code without copying it.

[Thunderstone]

On a related side issue:

As a direct result of expanded contractual obligations, Thunderstone
is no longer able to assist in the creation of meta-search engines
which operate against the large generalized Internet engines.

This is not to say that your usage of the Webinator and or Texis software
is limited in any way, its just that we can no longer really help you create
or modify one that searches the big web indexes.

Thanks!
Thunderstone