Quickstart: Send a query to the Bing Local Business Search API in C#
Warning
On October 30, 2020, the Bing Search APIs moved from Azure AI services to Bing Search Services. This documentation is provided for reference only. For updated documentation, see the Bing search API documentation. For instructions on creating new Azure resources for Bing search, see Create a Bing Search resource through the Azure Marketplace.
Use this quickstart to learn how to send requests to the Bing Local Business Search API, which is an Azure Cognitive Service. Although this simple application is written in C#, the API is a RESTful Web service compatible with any programming language capable of making HTTP requests and parsing JSON.
This example application gets local response data from the API for a search query.
Prerequisites
- An Azure subscription - Create one for free
- Any edition of Visual Studio 2019.
- If you're using Linux/MacOS, this application can be run using Mono.
- Once you have your Azure subscription, create a Bing Search resource in the Azure portal to get your key and endpoint. After it deploys, click Go to resource.
Create the request
The following code creates a WebRequest, sets the access key header, and adds a query string for restaurant in Bellevue. It then sends the request and assigns the response to a string to contain the JSON text.
// Replace the accessKey string value with your valid access key.
const string accessKey = "enter key here";
const string uriBase = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/localbusinesses/search";
const string searchTerm = "restaurant in Bellevue";
// Construct the URI of the search request
var uriQuery = uriBase + "?q=" + Uri.EscapeDataString(searchQuery) + mkt=en-us;
// Run the Web request and get response.
WebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.Create(uriQuery);
request.Headers["Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key"] = accessKey;
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponseAsync().Result;
string json = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
Run the complete application
The following code uses the Bing Local Business Search API to return localized search results from the Bing search engine. You can use this code by following these steps:
- Create a new console solution in Visual Studio (the Community Edition is sufficient).
- Replace Program.cs with the code provided below.
- Replace the
accessKeyvalue with an access key valid for your subscription. - Run the program.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
namespace localSearch
{
class Program
{
// **********************************************
// *** Update or verify the following values. ***
// **********************************************
// Replace the accessKey string value with your valid access key.
const string accessKey = "enter key here";
const string uriBase = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/localbusinesses/search";
const string searchTerm = "restaurant in Bellevue";
// Returns search results including relevant headers
struct SearchResult
{
public String jsonResult;
public Dictionary<String, String> relevantHeaders;
}
static void Main()
{
Console.OutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
Console.WriteLine("Searching locally for: " + searchTerm);
SearchResult result = BingLocalSearch(searchTerm, accessKey);
Console.WriteLine("\nRelevant HTTP Headers:\n");
foreach (var header in result.relevantHeaders)
Console.WriteLine(header.Key + ": " + header.Value);
Console.WriteLine("\nJSON Response:\n");
Console.WriteLine(JsonPrettyPrint(result.jsonResult));
Console.Write("\nPress Enter to exit ");
Console.ReadLine();
}
/// <summary>
/// Performs a Bing Local business search and return the results as a SearchResult.
/// </summary>
static SearchResult BingLocalSearch(string searchQuery, string key)
{
// Construct the URI of the search request
var uriQuery = uriBase + "?q=" + Uri.EscapeDataString(searchQuery) + "&mkt=en-us";
// Perform the Web request and get the response
WebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.Create(uriQuery);
request.Headers["Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key"] = key;
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponseAsync().Result;
string json = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
// Create result object for return
var searchResult = new SearchResult();
searchResult.jsonResult = json;
searchResult.relevantHeaders = new Dictionary<String, String>();
// Extract Bing HTTP headers
foreach (String header in response.Headers)
{
if (header.StartsWith("BingAPIs-") || header.StartsWith("X-MSEdge-"))
searchResult.relevantHeaders[header] = response.Headers[header];
}
return searchResult;
}
/// <summary>
/// Formats the given JSON string by adding line breaks and indents.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="json">The raw JSON string to format.</param>
/// <returns>The formatted JSON string.</returns>
static string JsonPrettyPrint(string json)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(json))
return string.Empty;
json = json.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "").Replace("\t", "");
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
bool quote = false;
bool ignore = false;
int offset = 0;
int indentLength = 3;
foreach (char ch in json)
{
switch (ch)
{
case '"':
if (!ignore) quote = !quote;
break;
case '\'':
if (quote) ignore = !ignore;
break;
}
if (quote)
sb.Append(ch);
else
{
switch (ch)
{
case '{':
case '[':
sb.Append(ch);
sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);
sb.Append(new string(' ', ++offset * indentLength));
break;
case '}':
case ']':
sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);
sb.Append(new string(' ', --offset * indentLength));
sb.Append(ch);
break;
case ',':
sb.Append(ch);
sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);
sb.Append(new string(' ', offset * indentLength));
break;
case ':':
sb.Append(ch);
sb.Append(' ');
break;
default:
if (ch != ' ') sb.Append(ch);
break;
}
}
}
return sb.ToString().Trim();
}
}
}