The Plenitude of Arboreal Beauty

The author published this entry on Friday 07 December, 2007 at 10:11 am. It's been filed in the GNOME Docategory

Google Search Action for GNOME Do

Google search action in GNOME Do
As more people are using GNOME Do, I keep getting nagged about how GNOME Do doesn’t do this or that. This is exactly why GNOME Do has a plugin system for adding to the items and actions GNOME Do provides. For example, many people have said “Launchy/Quicksilver/Katapult/my mom has a Google search action, why doesn’t GNOME Do have one? This is a bug!” Well, even though documentation is sparse at the moment, here’s an example of how easy it is to create a Google action for GNOME Do.

Below, I create a simple Google search action by implementing the IAction interface from the Do.Addins library. I give the action a name, a description, and I use the stock “search” icon. I specify that this action only supports the ITextItem type, which is simply a type representing the text the user entered. In the Perform method, I assemble the URL for performing a Google search using the text from the first item (I know it’s an ITextItem because that’s all this action supports). Finally, I open that URL with a method provided by the Do.Addins.Util.Environment class.*


using System;
using Do.Addins;
using Do.Universe;

namespace GoogleAction
{
  class GoogleAction : IAction
  {
    public string Name { get { return "Google"; } }
    public string Description { get { return "Search Google."; } }
    public string Icon { get { return "search"; } }

    public Type[] SupportedItemTypes {
      get { return new Type[] { typeof (ITextItem) }; }
    }

    public Type[] SupportedModifierItemTypes {
      get { return null; }
    }

    public bool ModifierItemsOptional {
      get { return false; }
    }

    public bool SupportsItem (IItem item) {
      return true;
    }

    public bool SupportsModifierItemForItems (IItem[] items, IItem modItem) {
      return false;
    }

    public IItem[] DynamicModifierItemsForItem (IItem item) {
      return null;
    }

    public IItem[] Perform (IItem[] items, IItem[] modItems) {
      string query;

      query = "http://www.google.com/search?q=" + (items[0] as ITextItem).Text;
      Util.Environment.Open (query);

      return null;
    }
  }
}

Then, compile the plugin, install it, and restart GNOME Do:


  $ gmcs -target:library -r:System -r:/usr/lib/do/Do.Addins GoogleAction.cs
  $ mv GoogleAction.dll ~/.do/plugins
  $ killall gnome-do
  $ gnome-do

Get it? Got it? Good.

*Note: Real plugins should be more robust, do some error checking, have comments, etc. This is only a sample.

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The Conversation {10 comments}

  1. nate 07 December, 07 @ 10:49 am

    I like how this works a lot. It seems more logical to type “Google blah”. Let’s say I want to send an IM to someone whose screen name is Gimp or something. Rather than having to type Gimp (in which case I would get either the GIMP or their name, I find it more logical to do “im gimp” for the IM and “gimp” for the program. Just my opinion obviously.

  2. Rick 07 December, 07 @ 11:10 am

    This is very cool to know. I hadn’t realized that commands actually came up in the first pane. I thought only IItems could. This opens up some possibilities.

    Thanks for taking a sec for this quick intro.

  3. immensewok 08 December, 07 @ 8:57 am

    Awesome. Thanks for spelling this out. I was able to make some simple changes to the template and search Wikipedia and my del.icio.us bookmarks. I tried to set this up for ubuntuforums.org but I’m not sure how to convert my text into their searchid.
    I did have a little trouble getting this to work. I had installed Gnome-Do through Synaptic and I got a permission error when I ran gmcs. I removed it and then built from the trunk and it worked fine. Is this normal or is this a lack of understanding on my part?

  4. Dave 08 December, 07 @ 9:09 am

    “I got a permission error when I ran gmcs” - weird. I have no idea what happened!

    I suggest you make an abstract “WebSearchCommand” class, and then you could easily create new web search commands by subclassing it, and implementing a SearchURLWithQueryString method. This way you could create your Wikipedia, del.icio.us, etc commands in 5-10 lines each.

  5. Bo 08 December, 07 @ 2:00 pm

    Huh, interesting, how come my gnome-do is rectangular boxed? instead of round boxed :(

  6. Bo 08 December, 07 @ 2:01 pm

    Apologies, didn’t know I can’t put HTML in comments

    Here’s a snapshot of my gnome-do, weird behavior indeed
    http://img337.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gnomedoiu9.png

  7. Dave 08 December, 07 @ 2:22 pm

    You need compositing turned on for the pretty window.

  8. Peter 09 December, 07 @ 8:43 am

    The command to download and install at http://do.davebsd.com/?q=content/download has a typo. Either the && or the ; should be there, but not both. The line’s right on the launchpad page, wrong on http://do.davebsd.com/?q=content/download.

    Nice little bit of software!

  9. Guillermo 09 December, 07 @ 12:42 pm

    Using Gnome Do in Ubuntu Gutsy, that path for Do.Addins library is wrong. I have tha library just in “/usr/lib/do/”.
    And works fine! :)

  10. ygallardo 10 December, 07 @ 11:17 am

    Wow, it’s very easy make a addins for some web search with the GoogleCommand, making some little changes on the code I make a Youtube search videos with Gnome Do.
    Very nice and easy.

    Bye

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