I have an Open Search XML for a web app that looks something like this:
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>AppName</ShortName>
<Description>Search App</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="32" height="32" type="image/png">https://not.my.app.url/public/favicon.png</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="https://not.my.app.url/$/search?q={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
A problem with this is that if I want to host the app on a different URL than https://not.my.app.url I would have to either manually edit the manifest to match the new hostname or use some sort of preprocessor that puts the right hostname there. Is there any way I can have a relative path instead? I tried simply omitting the hostname and protocol specifier, but then Firefox refused to install it as a search provider (I did not test any other browsers).
The OpenSearch specification defines the URL template grammar as:
ttemplate = tscheme ":" thier-part [ "?" tquery ] [ "#" fragment ]
tscheme = *( scheme / tparameter )
thier-part = "//" tauthority ( tpath-abempty / tpath-absolute / tpath-rootless / path-empty )
tauthority = [ tuserinfo "@" ] thost [ ":" tport ]
tuserinfo = *( userinfo / tparameter )
thost = *( host / tparameter )
tport = *( port / tparameter )
tpath-abempty = *( "/" tsegment )
tsegment = *( segment / tparameter )
tpath-absolute = "/" [ tsegment-nz *( "/" tsegment ) ]
tsegment-nz = *( segment-nz / tparameter )
tpath-rootless = tsegment-nz *( "/" tsegment )
tparameter = "{" tqname [ tmodifier ] "}"
tqname = [ tprefix ":" ] tlname
tprefix = *pchar
tlname = *pchar
tmodifier = "?"
tquery = *( query / tparameter )
tfragement = *( fragement / tparameter )
As you can see the scheme and the hosts are required.
In other words, relative URLs are not allowed.
You must use an absolute URL, like http://example.com/search?q={searchTerms}.