| 
									
										
										
										
											2020-02-28 22:32:28 +01:00
										 |  |  | ==================================
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Limit access to your searx engines
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | ==================================
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Administrators might find themselves wanting to limit access to some of the
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | enabled engines on their instances. It might be because they do not want to
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | expose some private information through an offline engine. Or they
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | would rather share engines only with their trusted friends or colleagues.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Private engines
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | ===============
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | To solve this issue private engines were introduced in :pull:`1823`.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | A new option was added to engines named `tokens`. It expects a list
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | of strings. If the user making a request presents one of the tokens
 | 
					
						
							| 
									
										
										
										
											2020-06-28 11:40:04 +02:00
										 |  |  | of an engine, they can access information about the engine
 | 
					
						
							| 
									
										
										
										
											2020-02-28 22:32:28 +01:00
										 |  |  | and make search requests.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Example configuration to restrict access to the Arch Linux Wiki engine:
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | .. code:: yaml
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  |   - name : arch linux wiki
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  |     engine : archlinux
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  |     shortcut : al
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  |     tokens : [ 'my-secret-token' ]
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Unless a user has configured the right token, the engine is going
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | to be hidden from him/her. It is not going to be included in the 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | list of engines on the Preferences page and in the output of
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | `/config` REST API call.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Tokens can be added to one's configuration on the Preferences page
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | under "Engine tokens". The input expects a comma separated list of
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | strings.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | The distribution of the tokens from the administrator to the users
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | is not carved in stone. As providing access to such engines
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | implies that the admin knows and trusts the user, we do not see
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | necessary to come up with a strict process. Instead,
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | we would like to add guidelines to the documentation of the feature.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  |  
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Next steps
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | ==========
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Now that searx has support for both offline engines and private engines,
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | it is possible to add concrete engines which benefit from these features.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | For example engines which search on the local host running the instance.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Be it searching your file system or querying a private database. Be creative
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | and come up with new solutions which fit your use case.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | Acknowledgement
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | ===============
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | This development was sponsored by `Search and Discovery Fund`_ of `NLnet Foundation`_ .
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | .. _Search and Discovery Fund: https://nlnet.nl/discovery
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | .. _NLnet Foundation: https://nlnet.nl/
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | 
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | | Happy hacking.
 | 
					
						
							|  |  |  | | kvch // 2020.02.28 22:26
 |