Plugins

Plugins can extend or replace functionality of various components of searx.

Example plugin

name = 'Example plugin'
description = 'This plugin extends the suggestions with the word "example"'
default_on = False  # disabled by default

# attach callback to the post search hook
#  request: flask request object
#  ctx: the whole local context of the post search hook
def post_search(request, search):
    search.result_container.suggestions.add('example')
    return True

External plugins

SearXNG supports external plugins / there is no need to install one, SearXNG runs out of the box. But to demonstrate; in the example below we install the SearXNG plugins from The Green Web Foundation [ref]:

$ sudo utils/searxng.sh instance cmd bash -c
(searxng-pyenv)$ pip install git+https://github.com/return42/tgwf-searx-plugins

In the settings.yml activate the plugins: section and add module only_show_green_results from tgwf-searx-plugins.

plugins:
  ...
  - only_show_green_results
  ...

Plugin entry points

Entry points (hooks) define when a plugin runs. Right now only three hooks are implemented. So feel free to implement a hook if it fits the behaviour of your plugin. A plugin doesn’t need to implement all the hooks.

Runs BEFORE the search request.

search.result_container can be changed.

Return a boolean:

  • True to continue the search

  • False to stop the search

Parameters:
Returns:

False to stop the search

Return type:

bool

post_search(request, search) → None

Runs AFTER the search request.

Parameters:
on_result(request, search, result) → bool

Runs for each result of each engine.

result can be changed.

If result[“url”] is defined, then result[“parsed_url”] = urlparse(result[‘url’])

Warning

result[“url”] can be changed, but result[“parsed_url”] must be updated too.

Return a boolean:

  • True to keep the result

  • False to remove the result

Parameters:
Returns:

True to keep the result

Return type:

bool