Access to Desktop Search results

Today I run across DNKA [1]:

DNKA is a search tool for remote computers. It acts as a web server by interacting as a layer between Google Desktop Search (GDS) and the user. It allows other users to search, view and download your files, emails, chats and web history.

Basically it is wonderful; you get a full search access to the indexed content of a remote computer. IMHO this application should be filed under \”As long as You know what You are doing.\”. I tried it out in an intranet and got full access to the root drive C:\\.

Then later on I found Baagle [2]. The principle is similar to the above but the tools are different. Baagle is a set of Perl scripts wrapped around the search engine Swish-e. Baagle provides a standalone webserver and an indexer. But compared to GDS it is up to you to configure and restrict the indexing to the data directories of your desire.

If you like to figure out a similar solution with PHP have a look at the earlier mentioned nanoweb or nanoserv webserver built with PHP [3] and a Swish-e wrapper written in PHP [4]. Once decided to go for Swish-e (on Windows) you need a couple of tools to handle various file mime types, among others pdftotext, ps2ascii, antiword and one that I found today to convert Excel files to text, called xlhtml. Just search.ch for them 😉

Well, now the only thing I could not find is a few lines of code to get a configurable search field to be integrated in the Windows task bar as we know it from GDS. Anyone up with a solution?

[1] http://dnka.com
[2] http://floatingsheep.com/baagle.html
[3] http://nanoweb.si.kz
[4] http://www.neokraft.net/articles/swish-e/

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