1. A search system comprising: a device controller configured to provision a device to execute a copy of a selected mobile application selected from among a plurality of mobile applications; a crawler configured to extract content and metadata from a plurality of states of the copy of the selected mobile application using the device; a search input state classifier configured to identify search input states within the plurality of states of the selected mobile application, wherein identifying search input states is performed based on a first set of heuristics, wherein the first set of heuristics includes recognition of user-visible search indicia from the extracted content and metadata of the selected mobile application and recognition of items of the extracted metadata of the selected mobile application that correlate with search functionality; a parameter identifier configured to identify, for each of the search input states of the selected mobile application, necessary input parameters for a search function corresponding to the search input state; a search function data store configured to store a record for each identified search function in the selected mobile application, wherein each record includes: a navigation path within the selected mobile application to reach a search input state of the corresponding search function, an indication of input parameters required to be supplied to the corresponding search function, and a mapping of the input parameters to user interface widgets of the search input state; and a query processing system configured to, in response to a query, (i) identify a first search function record from the search function data store based on the query, (ii) within a first mobile application corresponding to the first search function record, navigate to the search input state of the first search function record according to the navigation path of the first search function record; (iii) based on parameters specified by the query, selectively perform the search function of the first search function record in the first mobile application, (iv) scrape content from a resulting search results state of the first mobile application, and (v) present the scraped content to a user.
1. A search system comprising: a device controller configured to provision a device to execute a copy of a selected mobile application selected from among a plurality of mobile applications; a crawler configured to extract content and metadata from a plurality of states of the copy of the selected mobile application using the device; a search input state classifier configured to identify search input states within the plurality of states of the selected mobile application, wherein identifying search input states is performed based on a first set of heuristics, wherein the first set of heuristics includes recognition of user-visible search indicia from the extracted content and metadata of the selected mobile application and recognition of items of the extracted metadata of the selected mobile application that correlate with search functionality; a parameter identifier configured to identify, for each of the search input states of the selected mobile application, necessary input parameters for a search function corresponding to the search input state; a search function data store configured to store a record for each identified search function in the selected mobile application, wherein each record includes: a navigation path within the selected mobile application to reach a search input state of the corresponding search function, an indication of input parameters required to be supplied to the corresponding search function, and a mapping of the input parameters to user interface widgets of the search input state; and a query processing system configured to, in response to a query, (i) identify a first search function record from the search function data store based on the query, (ii) within a first mobile application corresponding to the first search function record, navigate to the search input state of the first search function record according to the navigation path of the first search function record; (iii) based on parameters specified by the query, selectively perform the search function of the first search function record in the first mobile application, (iv) scrape content from a resulting search results state of the first mobile application, and (v) present the scraped content to a user. 9. The search system of claim 1 further comprising a digital distribution platform interface configured to download the selected mobile application from a digital distribution platform.