OpenSearch support for the symfony API

February 24, 2009 • Published by Fabien Potencier

We are always looking for ways to enhance the developers experience with the symfony documentation. Some time ago, we added PDFs for all symfony documentation to ease offline work.

Today, thanks to Geoffrey Bachelet, the symfony website has now support for the OpenSearch specification.

We have added OpenSearch support for all stable versions of the symfony API: 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2. If you use Firefox, the symfony search engines will show up automatically in the search engine menu. You can also click on the "API OpenSearch" link from the API documentation section.

I have also recorded a small screencast to show you how the symfony API search engine integrates well with Firefox:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Enjoy!

Published in #Documentation

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Comments

Daniel said on Feb 24, 2009 at 23:18

Great, I'll have a look into a Opensearch integration for one of my projects as well.

beevee said on Feb 25, 2009 at 07:18

But wait, why there is only two options, 1.0 and 1.2? You just said that support is enabled for all stable versions, including 1.1.

Geoffrey said on Feb 25, 2009 at 15:04

beevee: the 1.1 version of the plugin is available directly through the api doc pages, in the right sidebar

xdade said on Feb 25, 2009 at 16:18

Thanks, this is a really more comfortable way to consult the sf's APIs. I would report that this function is partially supported also by other browser like IE7+ and Chrome (the handy suggestions are not supported).

Geoffrey said on Feb 25, 2009 at 18:03

xdade: from what I read there and there, IE8 supports the suggestion spec extension. No idea when (if) chrome will support it as well.

And said on Feb 26, 2009 at 02:28

That is nice and handy addition, thank you!

gnagno said on Feb 26, 2009 at 11:22

guys, you simply rock!!!

can I ask if it is possible to add two other improvements to your alread great documentation?

1 - it would be nice to have a space to comment every api method, like in the phpdoc site

2 - is it possible to add interlinks between the api pages? for example when I read a definition like this one: "(sfView::NONE) renderPartial ($templateName, $vars = null) " I would like to click on the text sfView to read the documentation concerning sfView.

Thanks again for all your work! Gnagno

Fabian said on Feb 26, 2009 at 12:16

@gnagno: I personally dislike the comments, because there is tons of crap in it. Symfony has the snippeets, plugins and cookbooks where users can contribute clever ways of working with certain API. So I personally see no need and value in creating such API commenting.

elliesdad said on Feb 28, 2009 at 15:32

Another great addition to the Symfony documentation.

COil said on Mar 1, 2009 at 19:28

#10

That's cool ! To quickly check options of form widget for exemple. :)

Anton said on Mar 2, 2009 at 18:31

#11

Nice! Google Toolbar's custom search doesn't pickup the focus sometimes (cursor should stay in search field when press custom search button there), so OpenSearch is helping a lot.