Quickstart: Use Python to call the Bing Web Search API

Use this quickstart to make your first call to the Bing Web Search API. This Python application sends a search request to the API, and shows the JSON response. Although this application is written in Python, the API is a RESTful Web service compatible with most programming languages.

This example is run as a Jupyter notebook on MyBinder. To run it, select the launch binder badge:

Prerequisites

Python 2.x or 3.x

Define variables

Replace the subscription_key value with a valid subscription key from your Azure account.
```
subscription_key = "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY"
assert subscription_key
```

Declare the Bing Web Search API endpoint.

search_url = "https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search"

Optionally, customize the search query by replacing the value for search_term.
```
search_term = "Microsoft Bing Search Services"
```

Make a request

This code uses the requests library to call the Bing Web Search API and return the results as a JSON object. The API key is passed in the headers dictionary, and the search term and query parameters are passed in the params dictionary.

For a complete list of options and parameters, see Bing Web Search API v7.

import requests

headers = {"Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": subscription_key}
params = {"q": search_term, "textDecorations": True, "textFormat": "HTML"}
response = requests.get(search_url, headers=headers, params=params)
response.raise_for_status()
search_results = response.json()

Format and display the response

The search_results object includes the search results, and such metadata as related queries and pages. This code uses the IPython.display library to format and display the response in your browser.

from IPython.display import HTML

rows = "\n".join(["""<tr>
                       <td><a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a></td>
                       <td>{2}</td>
                     </tr>""".format(v["url"], v["name"], v["snippet"])
                  for v in search_results["webPages"]["value"]])
HTML("<table>{0}</table>".format(rows))

Sample code on GitHub

To run this code locally, see the complete sample available on GitHub.

Next steps

Bing Web Search API single-page app tutorial

Last updated on 2020-07-15