Quickstart: Check spelling with the Bing Spell Check REST API and Python

Article
05/21/2020

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 Spell Check REST API. This simple Python application sends a request to the API and returns a list of suggested corrections.

Although this application is written in Python, the API is a RESTful Web service compatible with most programming languages. The source code for this application is available on GitHub

Prerequisites

Python 3.x

Create an Azure resource

Start using the Bing Spell Check API by creating one of the following Azure resources:

Bing Spell Check 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.
The Bing Spell Check API is also offered in some tiers of the Bing Search v7 resource.

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.

Initialize the application

Create a new Python file in your favorite IDE or editor, and add the following import statements:
```
import requests
import json
```
Create variables for the text you want to spell check, your subscription key, and your Bing Spell Check endpoint. You can use the global endpoint in the following code, or use the custom subdomain endpoint displayed in the Azure portal for your resource.
```
api_key = "<ENTER-KEY-HERE>"
example_text = "Hollo, wrld" # the text to be spell-checked
endpoint = "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v7.0/SpellCheck"
```

Create the parameters for the request

Create a new dictionary with text as the key, and your text as the value.
```
data = {'text': example_text}
```
Add the parameters for your request:
1. Assign your market code to the mkt parameter with the = operator. The market code is the code of the country/region you make the request from.
2. Add the mode parameter with the & operator, and then assign the spell-check mode. The mode can be either proof (catches most spelling/grammar errors) or spell (catches most spelling errors, but not as many grammar errors).
```
params = {
    'mkt':'en-us',
    'mode':'proof'
    }
```

Add a Content-Type header and your subscription key to the Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header.

headers = {
    'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
    'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key': api_key,
    }

Send the request and read the response

Send the POST request by using the requests library.

response = requests.post(endpoint, headers=headers, params=params, data=data)

Get the JSON response and print it.

json_response = response.json()
print(json.dumps(json_response, indent=4))

Run the application

If you're using the command line, use the following command to run the application:

python <FILE_NAME>.py

Example JSON response

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

{
   "_type": "SpellCheck",
   "flaggedTokens": [
      {
         "offset": 0,
         "token": "Hollo",
         "type": "UnknownToken",
         "suggestions": [
            {
               "suggestion": "Hello",
               "score": 0.9115257530801
            },
            {
               "suggestion": "Hollow",
               "score": 0.858039839213461
            },
            {
               "suggestion": "Hallo",
               "score": 0.597385084464481
            }
         ]
      },
      {
         "offset": 7,
         "token": "wrld",
         "type": "UnknownToken",
         "suggestions": [
            {
               "suggestion": "world",
               "score": 0.9115257530801
            }
         ]
      }
   ]
}

Next steps

Create a single-page web app