Quickstart: Send a query to the Bing Local Business Search API using Java

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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 requests to the Bing Local Business Search API, which is an Azure Cognitive Service. Although this simple application is written in Java, 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

Create the request

The following code creates a WebRequest, sets the access key header, and adds a query string for hotel in Bellevue. It then sends the request and assigns the response to a string to contain the JSON text.

    // construct URL of search request (endpoint + query string)
     URL url = new URL(host + path + "?q=" +  URLEncoder.encode(searchQuery, "UTF-8") + &mkt=en-us");
    HttpsURLConnection connection = (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection();
    connection.setRequestProperty("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", subscriptionKey);

    // receive JSON body
    InputStream stream = connection.getInputStream();
    String response = new Scanner(stream).useDelimiter("\\A").next();

    // construct result object for return
    SearchResults results = new SearchResults(new HashMap<String, String>(), response);

Run the complete application

The following code uses the Bing Local Business Search API to return search results from the Bing search engine. Run this code by following these steps:

  1. Download or install the gson library.
  2. Create a new Java project in your favorite IDE or editor.
  3. Add the code provided below.
  4. Replace the subscriptionKey value with an access key valid for your subscription.
  5. Run the program.
package localSearch;
import java.net.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection;

/*
 * Gson: https://github.com/google/gson
 * Maven info:
 *     groupId: com.google.code.gson
 *     artifactId: gson
 *     version: 2.8.1
 *
 * Once you have compiled or downloaded gson-2.8.1.jar, assuming you have placed it in the
 * same folder as this file (localSearch.java), you can compile and run this program at
 * the command line as follows.
 *
 * javac localSearch.java -classpath .;gson-2.8.1.jar -encoding UTF-8
 * java -cp .;gson-2.8.1.jar localSearch
 */
import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.GsonBuilder;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import com.google.gson.JsonParser;

public class LocalSearchCls {

    // ***********************************************
    // *** Update or verify the following values. ***
    // **********************************************

        // Replace the subscriptionKey string value with your valid subscription key.
        static String subscriptionKey = "YOUR-ACCESS-KEY";

        static String host = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing";
        static String path = "/v7.0/localbusinesses/search";

        static String searchTerm = "Hotel in Bellevue";

        public static SearchResults SearchLocal (String searchQuery) throws Exception {
            // construct URL of search request (endpoint + query string)
            URL url = new URL(host + path + "?q=" +  URLEncoder.encode(searchQuery, "UTF-8") + "&mkt=en-us");
            HttpsURLConnection connection = (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection();
            connection.setRequestProperty("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", subscriptionKey);

            // receive JSON body
            InputStream stream = connection.getInputStream();
            String response = new Scanner(stream).useDelimiter("\\A").next();

            // construct result object for return
            SearchResults results = new SearchResults(new HashMap<String, String>(), response);

            // extract Bing-related HTTP headers
            Map<String, List<String>> headers = connection.getHeaderFields();
            for (String header : headers.keySet()) {
                if (header == null) continue;      // may have null key
                if (header.startsWith("BingAPIs-") || header.startsWith("X-MSEdge-")) {
                    results.relevantHeaders.put(header, headers.get(header).get(0));
                }
            }

            stream.close();
            return results;
        }

        // pretty-printer for JSON; uses GSON parser to parse and re-serialize
        public static String prettify(String json_text) {
            JsonParser parser = new JsonParser();
            JsonObject json = parser.parse(json_text).getAsJsonObject();
            Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting().create();
            return gson.toJson(json);
        }

        public static void main (String[] args) {
            try {
                System.out.println("Searching the Web for: " + searchTerm);

                SearchResults result = SearchLocal(searchTerm);

                System.out.println("\nRelevant HTTP Headers:\n");
                for (String header : result.relevantHeaders.keySet())
                    System.out.println(header + ": " + result.relevantHeaders.get(header));

                System.out.println("\nJSON Response:\n");
                System.out.println(prettify(result.jsonResponse));
            }
            catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace(System.out);
                System.exit(1);
            }
        }
    }

    // Container class for search results encapsulates relevant headers and JSON data
    class SearchResults{
        HashMap<String, String> relevantHeaders;
        String jsonResponse;
        SearchResults(HashMap<String, String> headers, String json) {
            relevantHeaders = headers;
            jsonResponse = json;
        }
    }

Next steps