Sudhir ReddyHacker @Yahoo

Hacking BOSS

BOSS … What ?

• BOSS = Build your Own Search Service• Open Yahoo’s core search features via web

services to let 3rd parties revolutionize Search• Monetization - Ads Service : 3rd parties

revenue share• Pay per use model. Don’t worry will give you

free access for hacking

“BOSS is a data API. It’s not a search API”

- Vik Singh, BOSS Architect

BOSS Details

• REST based API.

• XML or JSON output

• Web, News, Image, SiteSearch, and Spelling Suggestion services

• Time span filtering for News Search

• Image attributes like height, width, etc

• Document type filtering

• Delicious Tags and Popularity

• Keyterm extraction

• Microformat and RDF data

• Extended abstracts

• Complex query combinations and filters

• Search for data in different markets

• Recognizes most search filters from Yahoo! and Google (backdoor hacks)

BOSS … Authentication ?

• OAUTH 1.0• HTTP headers or GET params

• Self-serve sample code available– PHP: http://oauth.net/code– Perl: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Net-OAuth/– Ruby: https://gist.github.com/383159– C#:

http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/csharp/OAuthBase.cs

– Java: http://code.google.com/p/oauth-signpost/

Boss APIs … Data Request ?

http://yboss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/{service,*}?q={keywords}

http://yboss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/{service,*}service1.q={keywords}&service2.q={keywords}

Arguments: service, q, start, count, market, format, callback, sitesOperators: And, Or, +(Include), -(Exclude)

What can I Hack ?

• Some Useful Data Sources to mashup:Y! Answers, Twitter, Youtube, Wolfram Alpha,

Delicious, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, Foursquare, Open Data, IMDB, Amazon, Netflix, Craigslist, TheInfo.org

and more…

Previous Hack: http://ask-boss.appspot.com

Previous Hack:http://keywordfinder.org

Previous Hack: 4hoursearch.com

Inquisitor: Browser Extension

Resources

• Yahoo! BOSS: http://developer.yahoo.com/boss

• YQL: http://developer.yahoo.com/yql• OAuth: http://developer.yahoo.com/oauth/• YUI: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/• Everything@YDN :

http://developer.yahoo.com/everything.html• Google App Engine:

http://appengine.google.com• Amazon Web Services:

http://aws.amazon.com• Open Data: http://theinfo.org

Happy Hacking