Bing Custom Search Hello World in C#

In this post, I will go through how to use Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services to create a Custom Bing Search app in Visual Studio.

The first thing you will need is to create a custom search instance and get API keys. Once you have done that, create a new console app in Visual Studio:

You will see:

Add NewtonSoft.Json through NuGet:

Add the code. This is built on the example here.

using System;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Web;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace bing_custom_search_example_dotnet
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var subscriptionKey = "yourkey";
            var customConfigId = "yourcustomconfigid";
            var searchTerm = args.Length > 0 ? args[0] : "Hello World";

            var url = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bingcustomsearch/v7.0/search?" +
                "q=" + searchTerm +
                "&customconfig=" + customConfigId;

            var client = new HttpClient();
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", subscriptionKey);
            var httpResponseMessage = client.GetAsync(url).Result;
            var responseContent = httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
            BingCustomSearchResponse response = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<BingCustomSearchResponse>(responseContent);

            for (int i = 0; i < response.webPages.value.Length; i++)
            {
                var webPage = response.webPages.value[i];

                Console.WriteLine("name: " + webPage.name);
                Console.WriteLine("url: " + webPage.url);
                Console.WriteLine("displayUrl: " + webPage.displayUrl);
                Console.WriteLine("snippet: " + webPage.snippet);
                Console.WriteLine("dateLastCrawled: " + webPage.dateLastCrawled);
                Console.WriteLine();
            }
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

    public class BingCustomSearchResponse
    {
        public string _type { get; set; }
        public WebPages webPages { get; set; }
    }

    public class WebPages
    {
        public string webSearchUrl { get; set; }
        public int totalEstimatedMatches { get; set; }
        public WebPage[] value { get; set; }
    }

    public class WebPage
    {
        public string name { get; set; }
        public string url { get; set; }
        public string displayUrl { get; set; }
        public string snippet { get; set; }
        public DateTime dateLastCrawled { get; set; }
        public string cachedPageUrl { get; set; }
        public OpenGraphImage openGraphImage { get; set; }
    }

    public class OpenGraphImage
    {
        public string contentUrl { get; set; }
        public int width { get; set; }
        public int height { get; set; }
    }
}

Run the program. You will see the API returns posts that contain the words “Hello World”:

ABOUT CARL DE SOUZA

Carl de Souza is a developer and architect focusing on Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power BI, Azure, and AI.

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