Allow customized search URL for cell "Get Help" "search on" option

[hwine]

Currently, the provider for the "search on" item in the cell's "Get Help" menu is hardcoded to "google". For various reasons, not everyone wants to use Google, and the search URL format is "standardized" across providers.

Ideally, Marimo would use the browser's configured search engine (if feasible). Otherwise, a configuration item for this would be handy.

As an occasional user of Marimo, I don't know how open developers are to this sort of feature request, so I'm opening as a discussion first.

[manzt]

This is a reasonable suggestion. We could likely add a display.search_url config option with a template string (e.g., https://duckduckgo.com/?q={query}). Unfortunately there's no web API to detect the browser's default search engine.

Is this something you'd be interested in contributing?

[hwine]

Yes -- thanks for the pointer to a "good name". I'll try to get a dev setup going within a week and do a draft PR.

[hwine]

@manzt I have a couple of questions, after doing a bit of research. The coding change looks straight forward, but I'm less sure about the "rest of the story".

1. Will a "user must manually edit config files" solution be acceptable? Or will a UI to change the template string be required?

2. Currently, there does not appear to be any automated testing of the "Search Google" functionality. Now that the feature will no longer be hard coded, there are a number of sad paths that need error messages. Do you have any guidance on where to place the runtime error checking? (Perhaps AppFileManager._load_app with messages handled by LOGGER? Not the best fit, as this new setting is likely specified in the user or project config files, and _load_app is more in the notebook scope.)

3. Related to the current lack of tests, I'd love to add some, but I'm not familiar with the testing framework. Any pointers to similar tests would be appreciated.

My current plan is to start with the coding change and the error messaging as in item 2 above.