How to identify the search URL when creating a custom search

[stevo914]

Hello,

 

I am trying to understand how to identify the search URL of any website in order to create a custom search.

 

I am trying to do a custom search on the university's library website http://www.usherbrooke.ca/biblio/

 

Could someone indicate me how to proceed ?

 

Thank you

[dfay]

The easiest way to figure out a search URL is to do a search, then dissect the URL that displays the search result.

So if I search for Bourdieu , that library produces a URL with a lot of cruft:

https://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/results?sid=a907e052-7b42-4396-af76-278c2c68a208%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4203&bquery=Bourdieu&bdata=JmNsaTA9RlQxJmNsdjA9WSZsYW5nPWZyJnR5cGU9MCZzaXRlPWVkcy1saXZl

So the next step is to try stripping out everything but the query.

unfortunately the simplest form

https://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/results?bquery=Bourdieu

results in an Internal Server Error

and the other catalog link under the Catalogue Crésus produces URLs that don't have the query encoded.

...

I thought this was going to be an easy question, since I've done this with a dozen or so university libraries before....but the catalog servers you are dealing with here are not so amenable to the usual approach.

The next step is to start looking at the <form> tag within the underlying html and trying to reconstruct the URL that the page submits to the server to generate the search results.

[dfay]

After a bit of poking around in the source, I believe this should work:

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&authtype=ip,guest&custid=s8336272&setup=1&groupid=main&profile=eds&bquery={query}

or for author

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&authtype=ip,guest&custid=s8336272&setup=1&groupid=main&profile=eds&bquery=AU+{query}

or for title

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&authtype=ip,guest&custid=s8336272&setup=1&groupid=main&profile=eds&bquery=TI+{query}

I've been assuming that's the search you wanted, not the search box for the library site or the hidden tab search for just the library catalog.

Edited May 24, 2016 by dfay

[dfay]

What I did was to look for the block of html in the source that had the advanced search form, which was here:

<!-- CONTENT ELEMENT, uid:61050/text [begin] -->

<div id="c61050" class="csc-default">

<!-- Text: [begin] -->

<p class="bodytext"><a href="https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&authtype=ip,guest&custid=s8336272&setup=1&groupid=main&profile=eds"title="Ouvre un lien externe dans une nouvelle fenêtre" target="_blank">Recherche avancée</a></p>

<!-- Text: [end] -->

</div>

<!-- CONTENT ELEMENT, uid:61050/text [end] -->

and then add the &bquery element that we saw in the earlier cryptic URL to the URL in that <a> tag above.