Then, to write the source definition, there are 4 kinds of information to provide :

Each of these entries can be followed by an _attr and _re version of it. In the first case it allows the targeting of a specific HTML or HTML-node JavaScript ^[1] attribute of the designated HTML element, or to apply a .replace() on it. The _re needs a list of two strings : the first being a regular expression and the second a replacement pattern (see example below).

It’s also possible to give an _xpath version to use XPaths instead of CSS selectors.

Regular expression are a complex subject. Here are some documentation again. If you have already work with RegEx here are some key points to keep in mind :

The integration of images in Meta-Press.es results is possible via the fields : r_img_src, r_img_alt and r_img_title.

r_img is a shorthand that allows to directly retrieve all the fields of an image if it point on an <img … HTML tag with an src attribute (and optionally alt and title attributes.

with a CSS or XPath selector and to integrate them directly without any additional processing in the case the images source is well informed in the src attribute (the alternative text and the title, optional, respectively in alt and title attributes)

If it’s not the case (as for Euronews where the information is stored in other attributes like data-src, data-alt, data-title, or Die Press where the information is stored in different HTML tags) it is possible to complete the definition of images with r_img_src, r_img_alt et r_img_title fields and even r_img_src_attr, r_img_alt_attr and r_img_title_attr.

For JSON sources with images (such as La Croix or Les Echos), r_img is useless, and r_img_src is mandatory and it’s advised to add r_img_alt and r_img_title if the information is available.

It is possible as well to use regular expressions on these fields with re (ex. _El Mercurio (fotos)) or templates with tpl (ex. _Les Echos).

Meta-Press.es supports every date format accepted by new Date('date_string') and the english relative dates like 3 minutes ago, 8 hours ago or even today and yesterday.

Results might be sent an hybrid and invalid format.

In this case it’s possible to specify a regex replacement pattern to extract useful data from the source server’s answer (the JSON included in a JSONP file, or a RSS file without invalid headers for instance).

This feature is currently only available for JSON and XML source types.

Several third party search services (like Queryly and Algolia) allow to setup a callback from the GET HTTP request, its the name of a JavaScript function that will be called with the data as argument. When this parameter is set, the results arrive as a JSONP script and so you can simply remove the parameter from the original request to receive clean JSON instead.

Sometimes the information you want to display in a result field are scattered at many places in the result page (or JSON). In this case you can list multiple elements to grab and a template string to stitch them together.

To do this, define a list of elements (JSON paths or CSS selectors…) for the specified field (such as : r_txt), and to add an r_txt_tpl entry defining a string where you can put replacement tokens like $1, $2 … which will be replaced by the respective values of the elements of the list.

Furthermore, you can define an r_txt_attr with a list of attributes to be retrieved.

To finish, if the last attribute name is missing in the list, the textContent of the last element will be retrieved instead.

Check arretsurimages.net or publicsenat.fr for examples.

A source may need to perform an HTTP redirection to actually serve results. If it’s possible to target directly the 2e URL, it’s still the simplest way. But if it’s not possible, like with LeSoir.be, one will have to add a redir_url field in its source definition. Meta-Press.es will then ask for the Host Permission of this domain too (at search time).

Some sources need a token (generated with their regular search form page for instance) to serve results. Others need a preliminary request to setup the next response language…

In those cases it’s possible to define a preliminary request that Meta-Press.es will perform before the regular search.

This request can be tuned as finely as regular search requests :

A token_sel field also exists and allows to extract an element from the page to inject it in the search URL of the source via a replacement token "{T}".

If a source is using relative URL in its href attributes those URL will be completed with a prefix containing the source domain. Unfortunately, if the correct path contains additional subfolders, you will have to specify which "domain_part" to use to complete relative URLs via a dedicated field in the source definition. It looks like this :

Some sources return approximate results (not containing exactly your search terms), they are tagged "approx".

Among those sources some display (for each result) the portion of the text that matches your terms (or their approximate version). So we can verify, for those sources, if results really matches your search terms, and to keep only good results. To trigger this behavior, add the following entry in your source definition :

If you still have questions about how to add sources to Meta-Press.es after you have read all this documentation, you can ask us :