Sharing and discussing custom search templates for LaunchBar
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dfarfan
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:03 pm
Post
by dfarfan » Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:09 pm
Hi,
I want to implement search templates using the + (plus) sign to separate arguments instead of the default %20:
An example:
Code: Select all
http://www.metacritic.com/search/movie/black%20swan/results
This don't give the results i want
Code: Select all
http://www.metacritic.com/search/movie/black+swan/results
This gives the result i want
Both * and %s uses the %20 separator.
Any way to replace the %20 with a + sign?
Thanks in advance.
Last edited by
dfarfan on Tue Mar 29, 2011 6:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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manfred
- Objective Development

- Posts: 561
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- Location: Vienna
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Contact:
Post
by manfred » Tue Mar 29, 2011 6:08 pm
Unfortunately it is not possible to change the separator at the moment. I forwarded your suggestion to the responsible developer.
In the meanwhile, a possible workaround is to create an Apple Script and use InstantSend or the Enter Text functionality of LaunchBar.
An example how the Apple Script could look like:
Code: Select all
on handle_string(searchQuery)
set _url to "http://www.metacritic.com/search/movie/" & ReplaceBlanks(searchQuery) & "/results"
open location _url
end handle_string
on ReplaceBlanks(theString)
set current_Delimiters to text item delimiters of AppleScript
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
set sList to every text item of theString
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "+"
set newString to sList as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to current_Delimiters
return newString
end ReplaceBlanks
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dfarfan
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:03 pm
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by dfarfan » Tue Mar 29, 2011 6:58 pm
Thank you very much for the quick response. I'll give a try to your script.
I hope this will get implemented soon (maybe * for %20, and %s for +)
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manfred
- Objective Development

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- Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2010 9:47 am
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Contact:
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by manfred » Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:32 am
After some research I found a better solution

It is a little bit tricky to create the search string, but you do not need the plus separator at all!
This search string works:
Code: Select all
post-http://www.metacritic.com/search?search_filter=movie&search_term=*
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dfarfan
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:03 pm
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by dfarfan » Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:30 pm
Thank you very much, it's works on Metacritic, but that was an example, there are many sites that uses + instead of %20, and not all sites support POSTing the request.
Anyway, great solution!
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dashard
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2015 2:38 am
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by dashard » Sat Jan 31, 2015 2:44 am
The last reply to this query was almost 4 years ago, and the solution of using
"post-http://..." no longer seems to work:
LaunchBar can’t open “post-http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/xxxxxxx” because Internet addresses starting with “post-http:” are not recognized by OS X.
Any other ideas? Seems like some sort of prefix or flag for the wildcard (as suggested in a previous comment) would do the trick nicely.
FWIW, ! would actually go for *+* as a wildcard indicating a + sign, and *-* indicating a dash, etc. Simple solitary * would behave as always, with the escaped space character.