Usually, from wikitext this module should be used via a template, e.g. {{find sources}}. However, it is also possible to use it directly from #invoke, like this:

{{#invoke:Find sources|template|search term 1|search term 2|...}}

• template is the name of the template that should be called. It must be the full page name of the template, without the namespace, and with the correct capitalisation. So, for Template:Find sources, the template name should be "Find sources"; "find sources" with a lower-case "f" would cause an error. This parameter is required.
• search term 1, search term 2, etc., are the terms to be searched for in each of the search engine links. The first search term will appear in quotation marks, and subsequent search terms will be added without quotation marks. Each term will be separated by spaces. These parameters are all optional. If no parameters are given, the current page name will be used as a search term.

Alternatively the following can be used, which will convert any title to a search query, with the main portion of the title in quotation marks, and any parenthetical disambiguator outside quotation marks.

{{#invoke:Find sources|template|title=title}}

• template as above, is the name of the template that should be called. It must be the full page name of the template, without the namespace, and with the correct capitalisation. So, for Template:Find sources, the template name should be "Find sources"; "find sources" with a lower-case "f" would cause an error. This parameter is required.
• title the title to be converted to a search query. This is processed in the same way as the subpage name of the page if no parameters are used.

Load the module with the following code:

local mFindSources = require('Module:Find sources')

You can then produce the list of search links like this:

mFindSources._main(template, searchTerms)

• template is the template name, as outlined in the #From wikitext section above. This parameter is required.
• searchTerms is an array of search terms. Each item in the array corresponds to a numbered search term as outlined in the #From wikitext section above. Alternatively, an empty table with the title key set will automatically generate a query as described above. This parameter is optional.

Example syntax:

mFindSources._main('Find sources', {'Albert Einstein', '-"Marilyn Monroe"', 'relativity', 'science'})

The following templates are available for use:

There are two basic ingredients to making a new source-finding template. The first is the template configuration module, and the second is the template invocation on the template page.

To find the name of the template configuration page, take the page name of your proposed template without the namespace prefix, and add it to the base page of "Module:Find sources/templates/". For example, for Template:Find sources, the configuration page is located at Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources. Note that the template must be capitalised exactly as the page name is, otherwise the arguments will not be passed through from the template page to the module.

The template configuration page should look something like this:

return {
	blurb = "Find sources for $1 – $2",
	introLink = {code = 'google'},
	links = {
		{code = 'google news', display = 'news'},
		{code = 'google newspapers', display = 'newspapers', tooltip = 'Search newspapers with Google Books'}
	},
	separator = ', ',
	isUsedInMainspace = true,
	class = 'custom-class',
	style = 'color: green; font-size: 110%;'
}

• blurb - the text presented to users. There are two parameters available in the blurb, $1 and $2. $1 is the intro link, if specified, and $2 represents the other links. This field is required.
• introLink - an optional introductory link. If specified, this must be a link table. If the display value in the link table is not set, the search terms that the user entered will be used instead.
• links - an array of link tables defining the main links to be used by the template. This field is required.
• separator - the text separating the search engine links. This field is optional; the default value is taken from MediaWiki:Dot-separator.
• isUsedInMainspace - set this to true if the template will be used in the main namespace. If this is not set, when the template is used in the main namespace it will produce an error and be put in Category:Pages with templates in the wrong namespace.
• class - a custom HTML class to apply to the template text. The "plainlinks" class is added by default. This field is optional.
• style - custom CSS to apply to the template text. This field is optional.

Once you have created your template configuration page, you need to add the template to Module:Find sources/templates in order for it to show up in the table of templates on this documentation page.

Link tables are used in the "introLink" and "links" fields of the template configuration. They can contain three fields, "code", "display", and "tooltip". The "code" field is required, and must be one of the link codes listed in the table below. The "display" field is optional, and specifies a custom display value for that link to be used by the template. If the display field is not set, a default value is set by the module. The "tooltip" field is also optional, and specifies a custom tooltip for the link. HTML reserved characters are escaped by the module. If the field is absent, no tooltip is displayed. For the "introLink" field, the default value is the search text entered by the user; for the "links" field, the default value is defined in the link configuration modules.

The following table contains all the available link codes, with descriptions and examples.

The template invocation on the template page itself should look like this:

{{#invoke:Find sources|template}}<noinclude>
{{#invoke:Find sources/autodoc|template}}
</noinclude>

This activates the template code and also provides automatic documentation. template is the name of the template without the namespace prefix, and must be correctly capitalised.

If you want to use custom documentation from a /doc subpage instead of the automatic documentation, use this invocation instead:

{{#invoke:Find sources|template}}<noinclude>
{{documentation}}
<!-- Categories go on the /doc subpage, and interwikis go on Wikidata. -->
</noinclude>

New links are added to Module:Find sources/links. Link codes should be short but descriptive, and should be in lower case. For example, the link code for Google search is "google".

The link configuration page should look something like this:

return {
	url = '//www.google.com/search?as_eq=wikipedia&q=$1',
	display = 'Google',
    description = '[[Google]], the flagship search engine from Google Inc.',
}

Automatic documentation is provided for templates based on this module; the documentation is generated by Module:Find sources/autodoc. The autodoc module uses the following pages:

• Template:Find sources documentation - the template used for most of the documentation content.
• The template configuration page. Used to find the list of link codes, and to see if the template is used in articles.
• The template documentation configuration page. Used to find template shortcuts.
• The link documentation configuration page. Used to find descriptions of each of the search links.

This page is located at the "/autodoc" subpage of the template configuration page. It is only used to generate the documentation, not to generate any of the actual template output, so it does not need to be protected. It should look something like this:

return {
	shortcuts = {'shortcut1', 'shortcut2'},
	description = 'This template is used to provide source links on [[WP:AFD|AfD]] pages',
	docIntro = 'This template produces a series of search-engine links to be used on [[WP:AFD|AfD]] pages.'
}

• shortcuts - an array of shortcuts that redirect to the template page. These are displayed on the template documentation page using the {{template shortcut}} template.
• description - a brief description of what the template does. This is displayed on this documentation page in the table of available templates.
• docIntro - text to be used instead of the first sentence of the template documentation for individual source-finding templates. This is optional, and the default value is "This template produces a series of links to various search interfaces to help find additional reference material for articles."

The messages used in this module can be found at Module:Find sources/config and Module:Find sources/autodoc/config. This can be helpful for translating this module for use in other languages. Note that any template and link configuration used must also be translated.