Chapter 2. Developer Guide

The web-based SearchMonkey developer tool is designed to help you develop presentation applications and custom data services. This chapter contains the following sections:

SearchMonkey development relies upon industry-standard languages: PHP for presentation applications, and XSLT for custom data services. Most projects require only fairly simple code. For example, the PHP for most presentation applications is just a list of simple assignments into an associative array, and you can generate much of this assignment code with the SearchMonkey GUI.

Application Dashboard

The Application Dashboard is the starting point for all SearchMonkey development. This screen lists all of the applications and data services that you are working on, and provides links for creating or importing new modules.

Application Dashboard

Figure 2.1. Application Dashboard


  • Create a new application — Starts creating a new presentation application. Presentation applications are small PHP applications that display enhanced search results using data services. You can use an existing data service or create a new custom data service. For more information, refer to Presentation Application Screens.
  • Start with a sample application — Starts creating a new presentation application with some of the fields pre-populated from a sample application.
  • Import application — Imports an application from a SearchMonkey export file. For more information, refer to Export.
  • Create a new data service — Starts creating a new Page or Web Service style custom data service. Data services provide structured information to display in Yahoo! Search results. You can create a custom data service by calling an API or by extracting structured data from web pages. For more information, refer to Data Service Screens (Page) and Data Service Screens (Web Service).
  • Start with a sample data service — Starts creating a new custom data service with some of the fields pre-populated from a sample data service.
  • Import data service — Imports an application from a SearchMonkey export file. For more information, refer to Export.
  • Create a New Data Feed — Links to documentation that explains how to create a new data feed using Yahoo! Site Explorer, a website for submitting sites to Yahoo! Search and for viewing crawl statistics. Data Feeds are XML feeds in SearchMonkey's native DataRSS format.

    Most SearchMonkey developers do not have to worry about submitting data feeds or learning about all the details of the DataRSS specification. However, you do need to understand the most basic elements of DataRSS so that your applications can extract data properly. For more information, refer to DataRSS Primer for Developers.

    If you are a site owner who wants to construct a DataRSS data feed, refer to Chapter 3, Site Owner Guide and DataRSS Primer for Developers.

  • Edit a Sample Data Feed — Links directly to an example data feed, an Atom XML file that includes URL metadata. You can use this example feed to help you model your own site's data as a feed for SearchMonkey.

If you have any existing applications or data services in your dashboard, three buttons become available for each module:

  • Edit — Edits the application or data service.
  • Delete — Removes the application or data service from the dashboard. You will be prompted for confirmation.

    If you delete a data service, any applications that depend on that data service continue to function. However, the data service no longer appears in the common Data Services Library, and you cannot create new applications that depend on that data service.

  • Export — Exports the application to a small, encrypted text file. This enables you to share your work with other groups through email, forums, and other methods. Using the Import link, other developers can import this file into their Application Dashboard and reproduce your module in their environment.

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