gosearch (SearXNG rewrite in Go)

This repository contains a standalone Go HTTP service that implements a SearXNG-compatible API-first /search endpoint and proxies unported engines to an upstream SearXNG instance.

Endpoints

• GET /healthz -> OK
• GET|POST /search
  • Required form/body parameter: q
  • Optional: format (json | csv | rss; default: json)

Supported format=...

• json: SearXNG-style JSON response (query, number_of_results, results, answers, corrections, infoboxes, suggestions, unresponsive_engines)
• csv: CSV with header title,url,content,host,engine,score,type
• rss: RSS 2.0 feed based on the opensearch_response_rss.xml template fields

Request parameters

The server accepts SearXNG form parameters (both GET query string and POST form-encoded):

• q (required): search query
• format (optional): json/csv/rss
• pageno (optional, default 1): positive integer
• safesearch (optional, default 0): integer 0..2
• time_range (optional): day|week|month|year (or omitted/None)
• timeout_limit (optional): float, seconds (or omitted/None)
• language (optional, default auto): auto or a BCP-47-ish language code
• engines (optional): comma-separated engine names (e.g. wikipedia,arxiv)
• categories / category_<name> (optional): used for selecting the initial ported subset
• engine_data-<engine>-<key>=<value> (optional): per-engine custom parameters

Environment variables

• PORT (optional, default 8080)
• UPSTREAM_SEARXNG_URL (optional for now, but required if you expect unported engines)
  • When set, unported engines are proxied to ${UPSTREAM_SEARXNG_URL}/search with format=json.
• LOCAL_PORTED_ENGINES (optional, default wikipedia,arxiv,crossref,braveapi,qwant)
  • Controls which engine names are executed locally (Go-native adapters).
• HTTP_TIMEOUT (optional, default 10s)
  • Timeout for both local engine API calls and upstream proxy calls.
• Brave Search API:
  • BRAVE_API_KEY (optional): enables the braveapi engine when set
  • BRAVE_ACCESS_TOKEN (optional): if set, requests must include a token (header Authorization: Bearer <token>, X-Search-Token, X-Brave-Access-Token, or form field token)

Ported vs proxied strategy

1. The service plans which engines should run locally vs upstream using LOCAL_PORTED_ENGINES.
2. It executes local ported engines using Go-native adapters:
   • wikipedia, arxiv, crossref
3. Any remaining requested engines are proxied to upstream SearXNG (format=json).
4. Responses are merged:
   • results are de-duplicated by engine|title|url
   • suggestions/corrections are treated as sets
   • other arrays are concatenated

Running with Nix

This repo uses flake.nix to provide the Go toolchain.

nix develop
go test ./...
go run ./cmd/searxng-go

Example:

export UPSTREAM_SEARXNG_URL="http://127.0.0.1:8888"
export PORT="8080"
nix develop -c go run ./cmd/searxng-go