Quickstart: Search for images using the Bing Image Search REST API and C#

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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 search requests to the Bing Image Search API. This C# application sends a search query to the API, and displays the URL of the first image in the results. Although this application is written in C#, the API is a RESTful web service compatible with most programming languages.

Prerequisites

Create and initialize a project

  1. Create a new console solution named BingSearchApisQuickStart in Visual Studio. Then, add the following namespaces to the main code file:

    using System;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq;

  2. Create variables for the API endpoint, your subscription key, and search term. For uriBase, you can use the global endpoint in the following code, or use the custom subdomain endpoint displayed in the Azure portal for your resource.

    //...
namespace BingSearchApisQuickstart
{
    class Program
    {
    // Replace the this string with your valid access key.
    const string subscriptionKey = "enter your key here";
    const string uriBase = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/images/search";
    const string searchTerm = "tropical ocean";
//...

Create a struct to format the Bing Image Search response

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

    namespace BingSearchApisQuickstart
    {
        class Program
        {
        //...
            struct SearchResult
            {
                public String jsonResult;
                public Dictionary<String, String> relevantHeaders;
            }
//...

Create a method to send search requests

Create a method named BingImageSearch to perform the call to the API, and set the return type to the SearchResult struct created previously.

//...
namespace BingSearchApisQuickstart
{
    //...
    class Program
    {
        //...
        static SearchResult BingImageSearch(string searchTerm)
        {
        }
//...

Create and handle an image search request

In the BingImageSearch method, perform the following steps:

  1. Construct the URI for the search request. Format the SearchTerm search term before you append it to the string.

    static SearchResult BingImageSearch(string SearchTerm){

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

  2. Send 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();

  3. 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 and view the response

  1. In the main method, call BingImageSearch() and store the returned response. Then, deserialize the JSON into an object.

    SearchResult result = BingImageSearch(searchTerm);
//deserialize the JSON response from the Bing Image Search API
dynamic jsonObj = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(result.jsonResult);

  2. Get the first returned image from jsonObj, and print out the title and a URL to the image.

    var firstJsonObj = jsonObj["value"][0];
Console.WriteLine("Title for the first image result: " + firstJsonObj["name"]+"\n");
//After running the application, copy the output URL into a browser to see the image.
Console.WriteLine("URL for the first image result: " + firstJsonObj["webSearchUrl"]+"\n");

Example JSON response

Responses from the Bing Image Search API are returned as JSON. This sample response has been truncated to show a single result.

{
"_type":"Images",
"instrumentation":{
    "_type":"ResponseInstrumentation"
},
"readLink":"images\/search?q=tropical ocean",
"webSearchUrl":"https:\/\/www.bing.com\/images\/search?q=tropical ocean&FORM=OIIARP",
"totalEstimatedMatches":842,
"nextOffset":47,
"value":[
    {
        "webSearchUrl":"https:\/\/www.bing.com\/images\/search?view=detailv2&FORM=OIIRPO&q=tropical+ocean&id=8607ACDACB243BDEA7E1EF78127DA931E680E3A5&simid=608027248313960152",
        "name":"My Life in the Ocean | The greatest WordPress.com site in ...",
        "thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/tse3.mm.bing.net\/th?id=OIP.fmwSKKmKpmZtJiBDps1kLAHaEo&pid=Api",
        "datePublished":"2017-11-03T08:51:00.0000000Z",
        "contentUrl":"https:\/\/mylifeintheocean.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/tropical-ocean-wallpaper-1920x12003.jpg",
        "hostPageUrl":"https:\/\/mylifeintheocean.wordpress.com\/",
        "contentSize":"897388 B",
        "encodingFormat":"jpeg",
        "hostPageDisplayUrl":"https:\/\/mylifeintheocean.wordpress.com",
        "width":1920,
        "height":1200,
        "thumbnail":{
        "width":474,
        "height":296
        },
        "imageInsightsToken":"ccid_fmwSKKmK*mid_8607ACDACB243BDEA7E1EF78127DA931E680E3A5*simid_608027248313960152*thid_OIP.fmwSKKmKpmZtJiBDps1kLAHaEo",
        "insightsMetadata":{
        "recipeSourcesCount":0,
        "bestRepresentativeQuery":{
            "text":"Tropical Beaches Desktop Wallpaper",
            "displayText":"Tropical Beaches Desktop Wallpaper",
            "webSearchUrl":"https:\/\/www.bing.com\/images\/search?q=Tropical+Beaches+Desktop+Wallpaper&id=8607ACDACB243BDEA7E1EF78127DA931E680E3A5&FORM=IDBQDM"
        },
        "pagesIncludingCount":115,
        "availableSizesCount":44
        },
        "imageId":"8607ACDACB243BDEA7E1EF78127DA931E680E3A5",
        "accentColor":"0050B2"
    }]
}

Next steps

Bing Image Search single-page app tutorial

See also