searx_search

Utility for using SearxNG meta search API.

SearxNG is a privacy-friendly free metasearch engine that aggregates results from multiple search engines <https://docs.searxng.org/admin/engines/configured_engines.html>_ and databases and supports the OpenSearch <https://github.com/dewitt/opensearch/blob/master/opensearch-1-1-draft-6.md>_ specification.

More details on the installation instructions here. <../../integrations/searx.html>_

For the search API refer to https://docs.searxng.org/dev/search_api.html

Quick Start

In order to use this utility you need to provide the searx host. This can be done by passing the named parameter :attr:searx_host <SearxSearchWrapper.searx_host> or exporting the environment variable SEARX_HOST. Note: this is the only required parameter.

Then create a searx search instance like this:

.. code-block:: python

    from langchain_community.utilities import SearxSearchWrapper

    # when the host starts with `http` SSL is disabled and the connection
    # is assumed to be on a private network
    searx_host='http://self.hosted'

    search = SearxSearchWrapper(searx_host=searx_host)

You can now use the search instance to query the searx API.

Searching

Use the :meth:run() <SearxSearchWrapper.run> and :meth:results() <SearxSearchWrapper.results> methods to query the searx API. Other methods are available for convenience.

:class:SearxResults is a convenience wrapper around the raw json result.

Example usage of the run method to make a search:

.. code-block:: python

    s.run(query="what is the best search engine?")

Engine Parameters

You can pass any accepted searx search API <https://docs.searxng.org/dev/search_api.html>_ parameters to the :py:class:SearxSearchWrapper instance.

In the following example we are using the :attr:engines <SearxSearchWrapper.engines> and the language parameters:

.. code-block:: python

    # assuming the searx host is set as above or exported as an env variable
    s = SearxSearchWrapper(engines=['google', 'bing'],
                        language='es')

Search Tips

Searx offers a special search syntax <https://docs.searxng.org/user/index.html#search-syntax>_ that can also be used instead of passing engine parameters.

For example the following query:

.. code-block:: python

    s = SearxSearchWrapper("langchain library", engines=['github'])

    # can also be written as:
    s = SearxSearchWrapper("langchain library !github")
    # or even:
    s = SearxSearchWrapper("langchain library !gh")

In some situations you might want to pass an extra string to the search query. For example when the run() method is called by an agent. The search suffix can also be used as a way to pass extra parameters to searx or the underlying search engines.

.. code-block:: python

    # select the github engine and pass the search suffix
    s = SearchWrapper("langchain library", query_suffix="!gh")

    s = SearchWrapper("langchain library")
    # select github the conventional google search syntax
    s.run("large language models", query_suffix="site:github.com")

NOTE: A search suffix can be defined on both the instance and the method level. The resulting query will be the concatenation of the two with the former taking precedence.

See SearxNG Configured Engines <https://docs.searxng.org/admin/engines/configured_engines.html>_ and SearxNG Search Syntax <https://docs.searxng.org/user/index.html#id1>_ for more details.

Notes

This wrapper is based on the SearxNG fork https://github.com/searxng/searxng which is better maintained than the original Searx project and offers more features.

Public searxNG instances often use a rate limiter for API usage, so you might want to use a self hosted instance and disable the rate limiter.

If you are self-hosting an instance you can customize the rate limiter for your own network as described here <https://docs.searxng.org/src/searx.botdetection.html#limiter-src>_.

For a list of public SearxNG instances see https://searx.space/