change data sent to Locate lookup engines?

realtime99

I understand that you can add some search engines to the Lookup Engines built into Zotero. However, the information that Zotero sends to those engines does not always get me the information I want. When I use Zotero to locate books with Google Scholar, the "allintitle:XXXXXX" often does not locate the book I'm trying to gather citation information about.

I see that the lookup uses an opensearch template that has elements that describe the data sent to the engines, but I couldn't find any filename with "opensearch" in it.

I would like to have the option to try locating books by sending the ISBN to a Google Book search rather than the title. Is this currently possible, and if not, is there a way to do it?

Thanks.

Simon

You can either create a new locate engine and add it to Zotero by following the instructions on http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/creating_locate_engines_using_opensearch, or you can directly modify the template in locate/engines.json in your Zotero data directory.

realtime99

Yes, I saw that page, but once I modify the template, what do I do with it? Where do I put it so it will work in Zotero?

Simon

See the "Advertising Engines" section on that page and the example. An option to add a new locate engine appears under the locate menu.

realtime99

I'm still not quite there. It seems that in order to add a locate engine, I need to make a webpage with certain information in the section, and then add the lookup engine using Zotero's locate menu. When I use the Amazon lookup example with a Zotero item, it sends the title and author, each in quotes, to the Amazon search engine. But, when I look at the html source from the Amazon example, I don't see anything indicating that the title and author should be sent rather than the ISBN or other information. How would I specify that? Can you walk me through the steps a bit more?

Gracile

If you look at the source code of the Amazon example, it relies on a xml file: http://www.zotero.org/opensearchdemo/opensearch_amazon.xml which is the relevant one here. See especially the <url (...) template=(...) parameters.

Hope this helps.

<OpenSearchDescription>
<ShortName>Amazon.com Lookup</ShortName>
<Description>Look up books on Amazon.com</Description>
<Image width="16" height="16" type="image/x-icon">http://www.amazon.com/favicon.ico</Image>;
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-author={rft:aufirst?}+{rft:aulast?}&field-title={rft:title}&tag=httpwwwdig0e7-20"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>