goduckgo

goduckgo

Go package for DuckDuckGo Instant Answer API.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that:

• Emphasizes privacy
• Does not record user information
• Breaks out of the filter bubble

The Instant Answer API is described here. For example, the URL for querying about New York City is

http://api.duckduckgo.com/?q=New+York+City&format=json&pretty=1

The previous query causes DuckDuckGo to return the result in JSON format.

Function goduckgo.Query declared as

func Query(query string) (*Message, error)

generates the URL, sends it to DuckDuckGo, receives the result, unmarshals from JSON format to Message structure and returns a pointer to the structure.

Installation

go get -u github.com/ajanicij/goduckgo

Usage

Look at the source for the command-line utility, main.go. It imports package github.com/ajanicij/goduckgo/goduckgo, generates the query in the variable query (for example, "New York City") and passes it to function goduckgo.Query. That function returns two values: *Message and error.

Command-line utility

The source code of the command-line utility is main.go. It builds goduckgo command. Its usage is:

goduckgo [{flags}] <query>

Flags determine which fields we will see in the result. For example, if we want to search for "New York City," we can issue command

goduckgo -All New York City

Flag -All tells the command that we want all fields.

Command

goduckgo -help

(or goduckgo without any flags) will give us a help string that lists all available options:

Usage of ./goduckgo:
  -Abstract=false: Abstract
  -AbstractSource=false: Abstract Source
  -AbstractText=false: Abstract Text
  -AbstractURL=false: Abstract URL
  -All=false: All Fields
  -Answer=false: Answer
  -AnswerType=false: Answer Type
  -Definition=false: Definition
  -DefinitionSource=false: Definition Source
  -DefinitionURL=false: Definition URL
  -Heading=false: Heading
  -Image=false: Image
  -Redirect=false: Redirect
  -RelatedTopics=false: Related Topics
  -Results=false: Results
  -Type=false: Type

For example, query

goduckgo -Abstract DuckDuckgo

produces the following:

Abstract: DuckDuckGo is an Internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers'
privacy and avoiding the "filter bubble" of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo
distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users and by deliberately
showing all users the same search results for a given search term. DuckDuckGo also
emphasizes getting information from the best sources rather than the most sources,
generating its search results from key crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia and from
partnerships with other search engines like Yandex, Yahoo!, Bing, Wolfram Alpha and Yummly.

License

goduckgo is MIT licensed, see here.