SearchMonkey Tutorials (Yahoo! Developer Network Blog)

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YDN YDN Blog SearchMonkey Tutorials

Yahoo! Developer Network Blog

August 14, 2008

SearchMonkey Tutorials

If you've been waiting 'till now to build a SearchMonkey application, you're in luck — we're pleased to announce that two intrepid SearchMonkey developers have independently created some great tutorials to help you get started.

First, Mark Birbeck of webBackplane has released a set of SearchMonkey tutorials that cover the DataRSS format, creating a DataRSS XSLT extractor, and creating a presentation application. Mark's specific focus is on government websites and expanding the ways these websites can share information with citizens. In fact, one of the reasons Mark is so interested in SearchMonkey is that SearchMonkey apps enable people to see what's possible when you embed RDFa in your pages. Mark also points out that custom data services are an excellent way to prototype these kinds of features before you go to the trouble of changing your markup.

If that weren't enough, Chris Lindsey of the Yahoo! Search Editorial team has posted a two-part SearchMonkey tutorial series on How to Build a Custom Data Service [PDF] and How to Build a SearchMonkey app (Infobar) [PDF]. These step-by-step tutorials are written with the newbie developer in mind, and cover various pitfalls that you might encounter when you're first learning how SearchMonkey works.

Finally, it's worth noting that a number of people have posted SearchMonkey-related presentations on slideshare.net, including Chris Heilmann, Neil Crosby, and David Berkowitz. If you've got SearchMonkey tutorials or interesting apps to share, feel free to let us know.

Evan Goer
Yahoo! SearchMonkey Team

Posted at August 14, 2008 4:19 PM

Comments

I posted a very short tutorial / code sample on my blog for the Java SearchMonkey plugin:

http://www.javarants.com/2008/05/19/better-javadoc-results-using-searchmonkey/

Posted by: Sam at August 15, 2008 9:49 AM

Oh, I remember the Javadoc app! It's pretty clever how you built it through PHP and the Y! Index alone. Nice work there.

Someone needs to write the Uber Developer SearchMonkey app, which would act on java.sun.com, php.net, search.cpan.org, ...

Posted by: Evan Goer at August 15, 2008 12:49 PM