On Mon, 2014-10-06 at 14:04 +0100, Richard Turner wrote:
The implication is that the preferred way to implement a search
provider now is to build an app that implements a SearchProvider
interface (over D-Bus) and can be launched via D-Bus. How stable the
interface is I don't know, but I'd imagine that implementing a search
provider this way is less likely to break with each GNOME release
since messaging via D-Bus is that little bit further removed from
plugging-into Shell's JavaScript API.
Yes, the search provider API is stable and not going to change on you.
That would be way better than writing a shell extension that needs to be
updated every six months.
Keep in mind the privacy concerns of a search provider. If you provide
the user with results in the overview, you need to use TLS and validate
the server's certificate to ensure searches aren't leaked, and also
field complaints from users who don't want all their searches for
personal files sent to
ask.fedoraproject.org. A better approach would be
to always display exactly one result, like the Epiphany search provider,
that launches the search only when selected.
Also, search providers are supposed to be associated with applications
and launch results in the associated application, so you'd want to
install an
ask.fedoraproject.org web app.