Quickstart: Use Ruby to call the Bing Web Search API

Articolo
02/16/2022

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

Prerequisites

Here are a few things that you'll need before running this quickstart:

Ruby 2.4 or later
A subscription key

Create a project and declare required modules

Create a new Ruby project in your favorite IDE or editor. Then, require net/https for requests, uri for URI handling, and json to parse the response.

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

Define variables

A few variables must be set before we can continue:

Confirm that the uri and path values are valid and replace the accessKey value with a subscription key from your Azure account.
Optionally, customize the search query by replacing the value for term.

accessKey = "YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_KEY"
uri  = "https://api.bing.microsoft.com"
path = "/v7.0/search"
term = "Microsoft Bing Search Services"

if accessKey.length != 32 then
    puts "Invalid Bing Search API subscription key!"
    puts "Please paste yours into the source code."
    abort
end

Make a request

Use this code to make a request and handle the response:

# Construct the endpoint uri.
uri = URI(uri + path + "?q=" + URI.escape(term))
puts "Searching the Web for: " + term

# Create the request.
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
request['Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key'] = accessKey

# Get the response.
response = Net::HTTP.start(uri.host, uri.port, :use_ssl => uri.scheme == 'https') do |http|
    http.request(request)
end

Print the response

Validate the headers, format the response data as JSON, and print the results.

puts "\nRelevant Headers:\n\n"
response.each_header do |key, value|
    # Header names are lower-cased.
    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))

Put it all together

The last step is to validate your code and run it. If you'd like to compare your code with ours, here's the complete program:

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

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

if accessKey.length != 32 then
    puts "Invalid Bing Search API subscription key!"
    puts "Please paste yours into the source code."
    abort
end

uri = URI(uri + path + "?q=" + URI.escape(term))
puts "Searching the Web for: " + 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

puts "\nRelevant Headers:\n\n"
response.each_header do |key, value|
    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

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

{
  "_type": "SearchResponse",
  "queryContext": {
    "originalQuery": "Microsoft Cognitive Services"
  },
  "webPages": {
    "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=Microsoft+cognitive+services",
    "totalEstimatedMatches": 22300000,
    "value": [
      {
        "id": "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/api/v7/#WebPages.0",
        "name": "Microsoft Cognitive Services",
        "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services",
        "displayUrl": "https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services",
        "snippet": "Knock down barriers between you and your ideas. Enable natural and contextual interaction with tools that augment users' experiences via the power of machine-based AI. Plug them in and bring your ideas to life.",
        "deepLinks": [
          {
            "name": "Face",
            "url": "https://azure.microsoft.com/services/cognitive-services/face/",
            "snippet": "Add facial recognition to your applications to detect, identify, and verify faces using the Face service from Microsoft Azure. ... Cognitive Services; Face service;"
          },
          {
            "name": "Text Analytics",
            "url": "https://azure.microsoft.com/services/cognitive-services/text-analytics/",
            "snippet": "Cognitive Services; Text Analytics API; Text Analytics API . Detect sentiment, ... you agree that Microsoft may store it and use it to improve Microsoft services, ..."
          },
          {
            "name": "Computer Vision API",
            "url": "https://azure.microsoft.com/services/cognitive-services/computer-vision/",
            "snippet": "Extract the data you need from images using optical character recognition and image analytics with Computer Vision APIs from Microsoft Azure."
          },
          {
            "name": "Emotion",
            "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/emotion-api",
            "snippet": "Cognitive Services Emotion API - microsoft.com"
          },
          {
            "name": "Bing Speech API",
            "url": "https://azure.microsoft.com/services/cognitive-services/speech/",
            "snippet": "Add speech recognition to your applications, including text to speech, with a speech API from Microsoft Azure. ... Cognitive Services; Bing Speech API;"
          },
          {
            "name": "Get Started for Free",
            "url": "https://azure.microsoft.com/services/cognitive-services/",
            "snippet": "Add vision, speech, language, and knowledge capabilities to your applications using intelligence APIs and SDKs from Cognitive Services."
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  "relatedSearches": {
    "id": "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/api/v7/#RelatedSearches",
    "value": [
      {
        "text": "microsoft bot framework",
        "displayText": "microsoft bot framework",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+bot+framework"
      },
      {
        "text": "microsoft cognitive services youtube",
        "displayText": "microsoft cognitive services youtube",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+cognitive+services+youtube"
      },
      {
        "text": "microsoft cognitive services search api",
        "displayText": "microsoft cognitive services search api",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+cognitive+services+search+api"
      },
      {
        "text": "microsoft cognitive services news",
        "displayText": "microsoft cognitive services news",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+cognitive+services+news"
      },
      {
        "text": "ms cognitive service",
        "displayText": "ms cognitive service",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=ms+cognitive+service"
      },
      {
        "text": "microsoft cognitive services text analytics",
        "displayText": "microsoft cognitive services text analytics",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+cognitive+services+text+analytics"
      },
      {
        "text": "microsoft cognitive services toolkit",
        "displayText": "microsoft cognitive services toolkit",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+cognitive+services+toolkit"
      },
      {
        "text": "microsoft cognitive services api",
        "displayText": "microsoft cognitive services api",
        "webSearchUrl": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+cognitive+services+api"
      }
    ]
  },
  "rankingResponse": {
    "mainline": {
      "items": [
        {
          "answerType": "WebPages",
          "resultIndex": 0,
          "value": {
            "id": "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/api/v7/#WebPages.0"
          }
        }
      ]
    },
    "sidebar": {
      "items": [
        {
          "answerType": "RelatedSearches",
          "value": {
            "id": "https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/api/v7/#RelatedSearches"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Next steps

Bing Web Search API single-page app tutorial