The search service on this website is powered by Exalead. As well as providing search results for content on this website, the service signposts visitors to content on other regional organisations' sites.
This search service can be accessed via an API.
We encourage you to use the API for your own website or web applications. Please do experiment and let us know what you think.
What's in it?
The first version of the search service, released in August 2009, includes results from:
From April 2010, the search service also includes results from:
The aim is to build a high quality search index of content relevant to policy makers and data users in the West Midlands.
How to access the web service API
The search functions are exposed as a Web Service.
Search requests for the service should be POSTed to the following URL:
http://search.wmro.org/xibis
The WSDL for the web service is accessible at the following URL:
http://search.wmro.org/xibis?wsdl=com.exalead.search.wsdl
There's an HTML search interface for testing purposes at:
http://search.wmro.org/wmro
Documentation for developers
See the search front-end API: XML v10 guide (pdf, 1.33mb) for details on accessing and using the web service API.
See the query language guide (pdf, 241kb) on building queries for the Exalead search engine, including combining the query fragments shown below with additional query terms.
Feedback
Please do try out the web service in your own website or applications. It'd be great to learn how the service is being used, experimentally or otherwise — and how it can be improved.
You can add comments and share links on our Observations blog, contact gavin.wray@wmro.org or tweet @thewmro.