OpenSearch : new standard or error ?

[Sébastien]

Hi everyone,

Someone reported me a problem with search in COPS. The problem is specific to Moon+ Reader and FBReaderJ, Mantano is working fine.

I remember that search in FBReaderJ was working fine in May 2012. So one change has been make in FBReaderJ during the last 4 months (I already checked I didn't do any).

Let me explain how I handle OpenSearch :

 * I add the xmlns:opensearch in the feed
 * I add a Link :

<link href="feed.php?page=8" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="search" title="Search here"/>
* And following this link there is :
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  
    <OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
      <ShortName>My catalog</ShortName>
      <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
      <OutputEncoding>UTF-8</OutputEncoding>
      <Image type="image/x-icon" width="16" height="16">favicon.ico</Image>
      <Url type="application/atom+xml" template="http://cops-demo.slucas.fr/feed.php?query={searchTerms}"/>
      <Query role="example" searchTerms="robot"/>
    </OpenSearchDescription> 

This used to work fine and the only way I found to make it work is to do like http://manybooks.net/opds/ or http://www.smashwords.com/atom :

 <link href="http://xxx.fr/feed.php?query={searchTerms}" type="application/atom+xml" rel="search" title="Search here"/>

But that seems to violate the OPDS spec (so the validator too).

I already sent a issue to the author of FBReaderJ and quickly checked his sources but it will take some time for me to understand the code.

My main question is : Is my new way ok with current specs ? with any future one ?

Thanks in advance.

Sébastien

[Hadrien Gardeur]

Hello Sébastien,

You're doing the right thing, this problem is specific to FBReaderJ and Moon+ Reader.

The Manybooks and Smashwords catalogs are not valid OPDS catalogs, and rely on pre-OPDS/Stanza catalogs semantics that are not even valid Atom.

Since the OPDS 1.0 spec was released two years ago, it's too bad that some catalogs and clients do not fully support 1.0 yet. For catalog validation, hopefully we have the validator now. For clients I'm working on a test catalog and will publish the results of these tests across some of the most popular OPDS clients.

Hadrien

[Sébastien]

Thanks Hadrien,

I'll be waiting on your test catalog and results (http://code.google.com/p/openpub/wiki/ReaderCompatibility is unfortunately outdated).

Thanks a lot for your fast answer.

Sébastien

[Hadrien Gardeur]

Right, I'm working on something far more complex than that.

I don't include Moon+ yet because I don't have the contact of their core developer.

Hadrien