Quickstart: Search for news using C# and the Bing News Search REST API

Article
05/22/2020

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 make your first call to the Bing News Search API. This simple C# application sends a news search query to the API, and displays the JSON response.

Although this application is written in C#, the API is a RESTful Web service compatible with most programming languages.

The full code to this sample can be found on GitHub.

Prerequisites

Any edition of Visual Studio 2017 or later.
The Json.NET framework, available as a NuGet package.
If you're using Linux/MacOS, you can run this application by using Mono.

Create an Azure resource

Start using the Bing News Search API by creating one of the following Azure resources:

Bing Search v7 resource

Available through the Azure portal until you delete the resource.
Use the free pricing tier to try the service, and upgrade later to a paid tier for production.

Multi-service resource

Available through the Azure portal until you delete the resource.
Use the same key and endpoint for your applications, across multiple Azure AI services.

Create and initialize a project

Create a new C# console solution in Visual Studio. Then, add the following namespaces to the main code file:
```
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;
```
Create variables for the API endpoint, your subscription key, and search term. You can use the global endpoint in the following code, or use the custom subdomain endpoint displayed in the Azure portal for your resource.
```
const string accessKey = "enter key here";
const string uriBase = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/news/search";
const string searchTerm = "Microsoft";
```

Create a struct to format the Bing News Search response

Define a SearchResult struct to contain the news search results and JSON header information.

struct SearchResult
{
    public String jsonResult;
    public Dictionary<String, String> relevantHeaders;
}

Create and handle a news search request

Create a method named BingNewsSearch() to call the API, and set the return type to the SearchResult struct created previously.

Add code to this method in the steps that follow.

Construct the URI for the search request. The toSearch search term must be formatted before it's appended to the string.

static SearchResult BingNewsSearch(string toSearch){

    var uriQuery = uriBase + "?q=" + Uri.EscapeDataString(toSearch);
//...

Perform the web request and get the response as a JSON string.

WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(uriQuery);
request.Headers["Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key"] = subscriptionKey;
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponseAsync().Result;
string json = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();

Create the search result object, and extract the Bing HTTP headers. Then, return searchResult.

// Create the result object for return
var searchResult = new SearchResult()
{
    jsonResult = json,
    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;

Process the response

In the main method, call BingNewsSearch() and store the returned response. Then, deserialize the JSON into an object where you can view the values of the response.

SearchResult result = BingNewsSearch(searchTerm);
//deserialize the JSON response
dynamic jsonObj = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(result.jsonResult);
Console.WriteLine(jsonObj["value"][0])

Example JSON response

A successful response is returned in JSON, as shown in the following example:

{
   "_type": "News",
   "readLink": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/news\/search?q=Microsoft",
   "totalEstimatedMatches": 36,
   "sort": [
      {
         "name": "Best match",
         "id": "relevance",
         "isSelected": true,
         "url": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/news\/search?q=Microsoft"
      },
      {
         "name": "Most recent",
         "id": "date",
         "isSelected": false,
         "url": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/news\/search?q=Microsoft&sortby=date"
      }
   ],
   "value": [
      {
         "name": "Microsoft to open flagship London brick-and-mortar retail store",
         "url": "http:\/\/www.contoso.com\/article\/microsoft-to-open-flagshi...",
         "image": {
            "thumbnail": {
               "contentUrl": "https:\/\/www.bing.com\/th?id=ON.F9E4A49EC010417...",
               "width": 220,
               "height": 146
            }
         },
         "description": "After years of rumors about Microsoft opening a brick-and-mortar...", 
         "about": [
           {
             "readLink": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/entiti...", 
             "name": "Microsoft"
           }, 
           {
             "readLink": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/entit...", 
             "name": "London"
           }
         ], 
         "provider": [
           {
             "_type": "Organization", 
             "name": "Contoso"
           }
         ], 
          "datePublished": "2017-09-21T21:16:00.0000000Z", 
          "category": "ScienceAndTechnology"
      }, 

      . . .

      {
         "name": "Microsoft adds Availability Zones to its Azure cloud platform",
         "url": "https:\/\/contoso.com\/2017\/09\/21\/microsoft-adds-availability...",
         "image": {
            "thumbnail": {
               "contentUrl": "https:\/\/www.bing.com\/th?id=ON.0AE7595B9720...",
               "width": 700,
               "height": 466
            }
         },
         "description": "Microsoft has begun adding Availability Zones to its...",
         "about": [
            {
               "readLink": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/entities\/a093e9b...",
               "name": "Microsoft"
            },
            {
               "readLink": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/entities\/cf3abf7d-e379-...",
               "name": "Windows Azure"
            },
            {
               "readLink": "https:\/\/api.cognitive.microsoft.com\/api\/v7\/entities\/9cdd061c-1fae-d0...",
               "name": "Cloud"
            }
         ],
         "provider": [
            {
               "_type": "Organization",
               "name": "Contoso"
            }
         ],
         "datePublished": "2017-09-21T09:01:00.0000000Z",
         "category": "ScienceAndTechnology"
      }
   ]
}

Next steps

Create a single-page web app

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