Quickstart: Perform a news search using Ruby and Bing News Search REST API

Article
10/28/2020

Use this quickstart to make your first call to Bing News Search API. This simple Ruby application sends a search query to the API and processes the JSON response.

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

The source code for this sample is available on GitHub.

Prerequisites

Ruby 2.4 or later

Create and initialize the application

Import the following packages into your code file:

require 'net/https'
require 'uri'
require 'json'

Create variables for the API endpoint, news search URL, your subscription key, and search term.

accessKey = "enter key here"
uri  = "https://api.bing.microsoft.com"
path = "/v7.0/news/search"
term = "Microsoft"

Format and make an API request

Use the variables from the previous step to format a search URL for the API request. Then, send the request.

uri = URI(uri + path + "?q=" + URI.escape(term))
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
request['Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key'] = accessKey
response = Net::HTTP.start(uri.host, uri.port, :use_ssl => uri.scheme == 'https') do |http|
   http.request(request)
end

Process and print the JSON response

After the response is received, parse the JSON, and then print both the response body and its headers.

puts "\nRelevant Headers:\n\n"
response.each_header do |key, value|
   # header names are coerced to lowercase
   if key.start_with?("bingapis-") or key.start_with?("x-msedge-") then
      puts key + ": " + value
   end
end
puts "\nJSON Response:\n\n"
puts JSON::pretty_generate(JSON(response.body))

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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