Mac Widget for Local Search

Today I came across Mac Widgets for the first time after using this cool Local Search Widget from Insider Pages.

It was a cool experience (being able to search for businesses eg. My local Taco Bell in a widget without having to launch a web-browser).

I really like how easy it is to make these things (Mac Widgets) - they seem to be made up of some structured DHTML and that's about it!

Note to self: Macs are getting cooler every day (especially amongst developers) - I will have to give it a go as a development environment sometime soon! (Maybe when Internet Explorer becomes standards compliant and web GUI's can be tested solely from Firefox).

Ruby on Rails / PHP HTTP Referer header

Background:
I've noticed Google does a nice job of highlighting your keywords on Googles cached 'HTML' version of indexed PDF documents eg. tutorial pdf

This could performed by checking the Referer HTTP Header
eg.
<%= @request.env["HTTP_REFERER"] %> in Ruby on Rails
$_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"] in PHP

Problem Description:
I want to get a handle on any Google search query that a user has performed to visit a page on my site so that I can customize content specifically to their interest

eg.
A user searches on 'streetball blog' on Google
eg. http://www.google.com/search?q=streetball+blog
They click on "Jason's Streetball Blog" - a page I administer
I want to customize this page based on their referring keywords.

PHP/Ruby on Rails Problem Solution (ie. getting a handle on referring keywords):

PHP:
$ref = $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]
if (strstr($ref, "google.com/search?")) {
  $search_query = "";
  $query_arg = strtok($ref, "&");
  while ($query_arg !== false) {
    if (strstr($query_arg, "q=")) {
      $search_query = substr($query_arg, 2);
      break;
    }
    $query_arg = strtok("&");
  }
  echo $search_query;
}

Ruby on Rails:
 # Creates @referring_search containing any referring search engine query minus stop words
 #
 # eg. If the HTTP_REFERER header indicates page referer as:
 #     http://www.google.com/search?q=Most+Calories+iN+a+Cheesesteak+at+Belmont&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
 #    
 #     then this function will create:
 #     @referring_search = "Most Calories Cheesesteak Belmont"
 #    
 def setup_referring_keywords
   # Check whether referring URL was a search engine result
   referer = @request.env["HTTP_REFERER"]
   unless referer.nil_or_empty?
     search_referers = [
       ['^http://(www)?\\.?google.*', 'q'],
       ['^http://search\\.yahoo.*', 'p'],
       ['^http://search\\.msn.*', 'q'],
       ['^http://search\\.aol.*', 'userQuery'],
       ['^http://(www\\.)?altavista.*', 'q'],
       ['^http://(www\\.)?feedster.*', 'q'],
       ['^http://search\\.lycos.*', 'query'],
       ['^http://(www\\.)?alltheweb.*', 'q']
       ]
     search_referers.each do |search_engine|
       # Check if the referrer is a search engine we are targetting
       pattern = search_engine[0]
       reg = Regexp.new(pattern)
       if (reg.match(referer))
      
         # Create a globally scoped variable (@referring_search) containing the referring Search Engine Query
         query_args = URI.split(referer)[7]
         unless query_args.nil_or_empty?
           query_param_name = search_engine[1]
           query_args.split("&").each do |arg|
             if arg.split("=")[0] == query_param_name
               unstopped_keywords = CGI.unescape(arg.split("=")[1])
               stop_words = Regexp.new(/\b(\d+|\w|about|after|also|an|and|are|as|at|be|because|before|between|but|by|can|com|de|do|en|for|from|has|how|however|htm|html|if|i|in|into|is|it|la|no|of|on|or|other|out|since|site|such|than|that|the|there|these|this|those|to|under|upon|vs|was|what|when|where|whether|which|who|will|with|within|without|www|you|your)\b/i)
               @referring_search = unstopped_keywords.gsub(stop_words, '').squeeze(' ')
               $logger.info("Referring Search Keywords: #{@referring_search}")
               break
             end
           end
         end
        
         break
       end
     end
   end
 end