ExpressFind Image Search for AliExpress – Reverse Photo Product Finder

Description

Your visitor has a photo of a product. They do not have the words for it. This plugin turns that photo into a grid of matching AliExpress listings, on any page of your site, with a shortcode.

Upload a picture, drag one in, paste one from the clipboard, take one with a phone camera, or paste the address of an image already on the web. Matching products come back with their price, rating, order count, discount and photo gallery.

What it does

• A search box anywhere. One shortcode, [expressfind_image_search], or the ExpressFind Image Search block.
• Five ways to give it a photo. File picker, drag and drop, clipboard paste, phone camera, or an image URL.
• Photos shrink before they are sent. A 6 MB phone photo becomes a few hundred kilobytes in the browser, so the search feels fast on mobile data.
• Results that can be worked through. Filter by rating, by number of orders and by maximum price. Sort by price, rating, orders or discount. Flick through each product’s gallery without leaving the page.
• Every visual choice is yours. Colours, columns at three screen sizes, corner rounding, image shape, card shadow, text size and dark mode, with a live preview next to the controls. Every value is written out as a CSS custom property, so anything else is a couple of lines in Additional CSS.
• Your prices, not the supplier’s. Pick from 46 currencies with built-in exchange rates, add a markup percentage, and round to .99. The supplier’s own figure never reaches the browser.
• Affiliate ready. Append your tracking parameters to every outgoing link, set rel and target, and print a disclosure line under the results.
• Import into WooCommerce. Search from your dashboard, then create a product from any result in one click, with the images copied into your media library.

It protects your API budget

The search runs on RapidAPI, which charges per call, so the plugin is built to make as few calls as it can.

• Results are cached by image content. The same photo searched twice costs one call, whatever the file was named or where it came from. Uploading a photo that is already cached does not even touch the disk.
• Rate limiting per visitor, over a window you choose.
• A site-wide daily cap, so a burst of traffic cannot run up a bill overnight.
• Logged-in-only mode when the search is for members.
• A usage screen with calls per day for the last month, so you always know where you stand against your plan.

Privacy and security

• Searching is not local: it is answered by a third party API. Read the External services section below before installing, so you know exactly what leaves your site.
• Your API key is stored on your server and used only from PHP. It is never sent to a browser. It can also live in wp-config.php as SBIA_RAPIDAPI_KEY instead of the database.
• Uploaded photos go to their own folder, are given random names, cannot execute code, and are deleted automatically on a schedule.
• The search log records no IP address, only a salted hash used for rate limiting, and it can be turned off.
• Deleting the plugin removes everything, if you asked it to.

For developers

A REST route at sbia/v1/search, template tags, and filters on the request, the results, prices and links:

$products = sbia_search( 'https://example.com/photo.jpg' );
sbia_search_box( array( 'columns' => 3 ) );

External services

This plugin cannot work on its own: finding a product from a photo is done by a third party API, so images and requests leave your site. Everything that goes out is listed here.

1. AliExpress Search By Image API, through RapidAPI

What it is. The search itself. The plugin sends an image to the AliExpress Search By Image API, published by the author freecamp008 on the RapidAPI marketplace, and receives a list of matching AliExpress products. You supply your own RapidAPI key, and usage is billed to your own RapidAPI account.

What is sent, and when. A request is made only when a visitor runs a search that is not already answered from the cache. Each request contains:

• The image being searched. Depending on the How images are sent setting, this is either the address of a temporary copy saved on your own site, or the image data itself.
• Your RapidAPI key, in a request header, so the call can be billed to you.
• A user agent string naming this plugin and your site address.

No information about the visitor is sent. Not their IP address, not their name, not their account, not their browser details. The request is made by your server, not by the visitor’s browser, so the visitor is never in contact with the API.

Where uploaded photos go. In the default mode the API fetches the photo over HTTP, which means an uploaded photo is briefly readable at a public address on your own site, under wp-content/uploads/sbia-temp/. Names are random and the files are deleted automatically on a schedule you set, one hour by default. If that is not acceptable for your site, switch How images are sent to send the image data instead, and no file is ever published.

Terms. RapidAPI terms of service: https://rapidapi.com/terms/ — RapidAPI privacy policy: https://rapidapi.com/privacy/ — the API listing itself: https://rapidapi.com/freecamp008/api/aliexpress-search-by-image-api

2. imagesearchaliexpress.com

What it is. The API does not return AliExpress addresses directly. Each result carries a link on imagesearchaliexpress.com, a redirect operated by the same API author, which forwards the visitor to the product page on AliExpress.

What is sent, and when. Nothing is sent by your server. This only happens if a visitor chooses to click a result, at which point their browser visits that address the same way it would visit any outbound link.

3. AliExpress product images

What it is. Result images are shown straight from the AliExpress media servers, aliexpress-media.com, rather than being copied to your site.

What is sent, and when. When a visitor is shown results, their browser requests those images directly, which reveals their IP address and user agent to that server, exactly as any externally hosted image would. Nothing is sent by your server. The plugin sets referrerpolicy="no-referrer" on these images so the page they are viewing is not disclosed.

This applies to the WooCommerce import too: importing a product copies its images into your own media library, and after that they are served from your site.