Engine Overview

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SearXNG is a metasearch-engine, so it uses different search engines to provide better results.

Because there is no general search API which could be used for every search engine, an adapter has to be built between SearXNG and the external search engines. Adapters are stored under the folder .

General Engine Configuration

It is required to tell SearXNG the type of results the engine provides. The arguments can be set in the engine file or in the settings file (normally settings.yml). The arguments in the settings file override the ones in the engine file.

It does not matter if an option is stored in the engine file or in the settings. However, the standard way is the following:

Engine File

Table 2 Common options in the engine module

argument type information
categories list categories, in which the engine is working
paging boolean support multiple pages
time_range_support boolean support search time range
engine_type str - online [ref] by default, other possibles values are: - offline [ref] - online_dictionary [ref] - online_currency [ref] - online_url_search [ref]

Engine settings.yml

For a more detailed description, see engines: in the settings.yml.

Table 3 Common options in the engine setup (settings.yml)

argument type information
name string name of search-engine
engine string name of searxng-engine (file name without .py)
enable_http bool enable HTTP (by default only HTTPS is enabled).
shortcut string shortcut of search-engine
timeout string specific timeout for search-engine
display_error_messages boolean display error messages on the web UI
proxies dict set proxies for a specific engine (e.g. proxies : {http: socks5://proxy:port, https: socks5://proxy:port})

Overrides

A few of the options have default values in the namespace of the engine’s python module, but are often overwritten by the settings. If None is assigned to an option in the engine file, it has to be redefined in the settings, otherwise SearXNG will not start with that engine (global names with a leading underline can be None).

Here is an very simple example of the global names in the namespace of engine’s module:

## engine dependent config
categories = ['general']
paging = True
_non_overwritten_global = 'foo'

Table 4 The naming of overrides is arbitrary / recommended overrides are:

argument type information
base_url string base-url, can be overwritten to use same engine on other URL
page_size int maximum number of results per request
language string ISO code of language and country like en_US
api_key string api-key if required by engine

Making a Request

To perform a search an URL have to be specified. In addition to specifying an URL, arguments can be passed to the query.

Passed Arguments (request)

These arguments can be used to construct the search query. Furthermore, parameters with default value can be redefined for special purposes.

Table 5 If the engine_type is online

argument type default-value, information
url str ''
method str 'GET'
headers dict {}
data dict {}
cookies dict {}
verify bool True
headers.User-Agent str ''
category str current category, like 'general'
safesearch int 0, between 0 and 2 (normal, moderate, strict)
time_range Optional[str] None, can be day, week, month, year
pageno int current pagenumber
searxng_locale str SearXNG’s locale selected by user. Specific language code like 'en', 'en-US', or 'all' if unspecified.

Table 6 If the engine_type is online_dictionary, in addition to the online arguments:

argument type default-value, information
from_lang str specific language code like 'en_US'
to_lang str specific language code like 'en_US'
query str the text query without the languages

Table 7 If the engine_type is online_currency, in addition to the online arguments:

argument type default-value, information
amount float the amount to convert
from str ISO 4217 code
to str ISO 4217 code
from_name str currency name
to_name str currency name

Table 8 If the engine_type is online_url_search, in addition to the online arguments:

argument type default-value, information
search_url dict URLs from the search query: { 'http': str, 'ftp': str, 'data:image': str }

Specify Request

The function def request(query, params): always returns the params variable, the following parameters can be used to specify a search request:

argument type information
url str requested url
method str HTTP request method
headers dict HTTP header information
data dict HTTP data information
cookies dict HTTP cookies
verify bool Performing SSL-Validity check
allow_redirects bool Follow redirects
max_redirects int maximum redirects, hard limit
soft_max_redirects int maximum redirects, soft limit. Record an error but don’t stop the engine
raise_for_httperror bool True by default: raise an exception if the HTTP code of response is >= 300
impersonate str curl_cffi impersonate target (default: chrome, none to disable)
curl_options dict Any extra libcurl options for the request

Making a Response

In the response function of the engine, the HTTP response (resp) is parsed and a list of results is returned.

A engine can append result-items of different media-types and different result-types to the result list. The list of the result items is render to HTML by templates. For more details read section:

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