Financial Times plugin

DEVONagent Automation
1

I am trying to create a plugin to search the FT with the following plugin:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Description</key>
	<string>FT</string>
	<key>EngineUrl</key>
	<string>http://search.ft.com/search?q=_agentQuery_</string>
	<key>Identifier</key>
	<string>search.ft.com</string>
	<key>Info</key>
	<string>FT Plugin</string>
	<key>Name</key>
	<string>FT</string>
	<key>OffsetPerPage</key>
	<integer>1</integer>
	<key>Operators</key>
	<integer>59</integer>
	<key>ParseLinks</key>
	<true/>
	<key>ResultsPerPage</key>
	<integer>10</integer>
	<key>Start</key>
	<integer>0</integer>
	<key>Version</key>
	<string>1.0</string>
</dict>
</plist>

The site sits behind a paywall but I cannot enter my login details in the plugin as the boxes are greyed out.

I have created a Search Set with the following criteria:

Follow Links - In Subdirectories
Sites - www.ft.com with my username and password
Plugins - my FT plugin selected

When I search for “Apple” with a secondary query as “iPhone NEAR 2007”, I am expecting DevonAgent to firstly return all entries with the term “Apple” from the ft.com search engine and then filter the results to only those articles with the words iPhone that are near 2007. The results, however, only return one entry which the summary results page that ft.com returns when one searches for “Apple” with their search engine on their site.

I am surely missing something and would appreciate some help in getting this working.

Many thanks.

1 Like
2

Does the plugin work after logging in first via DEVONagent’s browser?

3

Yes, it works if I log in first in the DevonAgent browser.

Why is it not possible to put the login information into the plugin(the boxes are greyed out in the plugin) so that it is not necessary to log in via the browser.

Many thanks

4

It’s possible but you have to add login support to the plugin’s XML code as most websites don’t support the standard HTTP/HTTPS authentication anymore. Therefore it’s necessary to define the HTTP POST used to log in, that’s quite tricky and specific for each website.

5

Would you be able to give me an example of how to add login support to the plugins XML.

Many thanks

6

You might have a look at the code of the JSTOR plugin (e.g. after duplicating it or revealing it in the Finder, see Window > Plug-ins & Scanners) but login support (the keys/values of LoginPost and LoginUrl) are usually completely different for each website.