Search box that searches another site

parameters, php, search

Solution

All you need to do is include a target="_blank" in the form on Site A, also the way that the request works on site B the siteSearchUrl input must be included

<form id="apprenticeForm" action="http://www.apprenticesearch.com/Resources/SiteSearch" method="POST" target="_blank" onsubmit='submitSearch()'>
    <input type="text" name="searchText" id="searchText" value=""/>
    <input type="submit" value="Submit"/>
    <input id="siteSearchUrl" name="siteSearchUrl" type="hidden" value="http://yboss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/limitedweb?format=xml&sites=www.apprenticesearch.com&q="/>
</form>

Like this http://jsfiddle.net/MVBLc/

After playing around with the form submitting, but the q parameter not being read by Site B, I believe it's because the input had escaped `&amp;` instead of '&'.

I've updated the HTML, and here's the javascript to update the field before submitting the form

function submitSearch()
{
    q = document.getElementById("searchText").value;
    document.getElementById("siteSearchUrl").value = 'http://yboss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/limitedweb?format=xml&sites=www.apprenticesearch.com&q=' + q; 
    return true;
}

Demo

The reason you need to use javascript for the additional input is the same reason why Site B uses javascript to populate siteSearchUrl in their script before it sends the request.

Looking at how the server works: Site B sends that request to /Resources/SiteSearch where the `SiteSearch(String searchtext, String siteSearchUrl)` function gets called on their server. If you were to just go straight to that page with no post parameters you will find that a `System.ArgumentNullException Parameter name: uriString` is thrown for not having siteSearchUrl set from the server.

If you want to analyze the parameters of siteSearchUrl:

- The URL `yboss.yahooapis.com` is for Yahoo's BOSS API servcie

- The `sites` parameter tells the API what site to search and display in the results

- and the `q` parameter is what query to search for

Problem

Site A: in development (PHP) Site B: http://www.apprenticesearch.com/ I want to include an input box on site A; after I type in the query and press Enter, open a new tab to display the search results of B. It would be as if I had typed the search query into B directly. For example I searched for 'testing', and inspecting the search result from B, I see the following. How would I pass the query from site A to B? ``` <div id="search"> <form action="/Resources/SiteSearch" id="siteSearchForm" method="post"> <label for="search-box"> SEARCH</label> <div id="search-box-wrapper"> <input type="text" id="search-box"> </div> <input id="searchText" name="searchText" type="hidden" value="testing"><input id="siteSearchUrl" name="siteSearchUrl" type="hidden" value="http://yboss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/limitedweb?format=xml&amp;sites=www.apprenticesearch.com&amp;q=testing"> <input type="image" src="/userfiles/images/E/buttons/go.png" id="search-button" value="GO" siteurl="www.apprenticesearch.com"><!-- www.apprenticesearch.com --> </form> </div> ```

Original source