Install the OpenSearch Plugin within Confluence (v 1.0)

Owned by Almuth Boehme [Communardo]
Aug 18, 2016
3 min read

This page describes how to install the OpenSearch plugin.

Basically you need to visit the OpenSearch plugin from Lunatech page and follow their instructions on how to install the plugin. Here are a few notes that may help:

1. Install the Plugin

Download the plugin from the link provided by Lunatech and upload it into your Confluence plugins using the Plugins page within Confluence administration.

2. Create an OpenSearch Description File

Download the opensearch.xml file from the link provided by Lunatech.

Depending on your browser the link provided by Lunatech may actually just show you a web page instead of downloading the file. If this is the case, view the page source (View->Page Source in Firefox and IE7) and copy the contents to a file.

The exact name of the file does not matter. It can be "opensearch.xml", "opensearch-description.xml", etc.

After you have downloaded the XML file, modify its contents as follows:

  • Change all instances of "http://yourdomain" and "https://yourdomain" to your Confluence base URL (e.g., "http://confluence:8080").
  • Change the Contact email address from admin@yourdomain.com to the appropriate admin email address.

After making the changes, upload the modified opensearch XML file to any page within any space within Confluence. You may want to copy the URL to the attached XML file within Confluence as you will need that in the next step.

It appears that this page does not have to be viewable/accessible by the federated location account which is configured later when you [Create a Federated Search Location within SharePoint.

3. Configure the Plugin

Go to the Confluence Plugin Manager, click on the OpenSearch plugin, and click Configure plugin. Then set the properties as follows:

  • Title - set this to the title you want the users to see in the Federated Search web part within SharePoint
  • Description - this is shown if a browser hits the opensearch URL (see further below), but is not seen by SharePoint users with the Federated Search web part.
  • Opensearch description URL - set this to the URL of the opensearch XML file you attached to a Confluence page

4. Test OpenSearch

Open your browser to the OpenSearch URL as follows:

<confluence base URL>/plugins/servlet/opensearch?searchfor=<searchTerms>&format=rss&os_username=<user>&os_password=<password>

For example the following would search for "demonstration":

http://confluence:8080/plugins/servlet/opensearch?searchfor=demonstration&format=rss&os_username=admin&os_password=password

If you are using NTLM with Confluence you do not need the os_username and os_password fields.

The results you see should be your browser indicating that you have a RSS feed available with the search results for the search term(s) you provided.

There is no need to subscribe to the feed (although you are welcome to). If you see results like this then you are ready to move on to the next step: Create a Federated Search Location within SharePoint.