How Seeks works and how to extend it

From Seeks

Contents 1 How Seeks works 1.1 Description of Seeks 1.2 Description of the different components 1.2.1 User (through Web Browser) 1.2.2 URL (to Web Servers) 1.2.3 Search engines 1.2.4 Seeks installation (LSH/proxy/DHT client) 1.2.5 DHT Seeks, with n peers 1.3 What information flows through each 1.4 What can be changed 2 How to extend it 2.1 What is a plugin 2.2 What can it do 2.3 Example of a plugin 2.4 List of other plugins

How Seeks works

Description of Seeks

A distributed proxy for the web to make search social and flexible.

from http://www.seeks-project.info/seeks/doc/seeks_technical_sheet.pdf

1. search request
2. forward query to selected search engines
3. parsing the results
4. making the results available to other nodes
5. responding to other nodes
6. sending the result back to the client
7. exchanging result with other nodes
8. processing the interaction with the target page
9. direct interacting with the target page (e.g. for binary files)

Description of the different components

User (through Web Browser)

The user with his or her web browser configured to search through a Seeks node.

URL (to Web Servers)

What the user is actually looking for.

Search engines

Servers periodically crawling the web and parsing their results.

Seeks installation (LSH/proxy/DHT client)

The Seeks node through which the client will reach his target URL.

• the LSH or Locality Sensitive Hashing maps user requests with the aggregated and processed results from search engines. For additional information see [[master:src/lsh}} as well as Wikipedia:Locality sensitive hashing.
• the proxy allows several users to collaborate through the same node. For additional information see master:src/lsh
  • and optionally to change their ways of interactions with the web and with each others
• the DHT client allows one to be part of the DHT and collaborate with other nodes

DHT Seeks, with n peers

A set of Seeks node that collaborate to improve quality and offer new social behaviors.

Note that there is currently (as of May 2011) no active DHT yet there is a List of Web Seeks nodes that, even if they do not exchange information between each other, can be consider a first basis for it.

What information flows through each

http

What can be changed

everything but mainly step 6 and 8

How to extend it

What is a plugin

A plugin can extend the default behavior of a Seeks proxy. It can change the information coming back from a page after a request.

What can it do

• Modify the returned content
  • Remove ads. For additional information see master:src/plugins/blocker.
• Display traces (e.g. this page has already been visited by your friend X at date Y).
• Allow multiple users to interact.

Example of a plugin

•  ?

List of other plugins

•  ?

See Tasks that need help#Hot_plugins