How to Use the Web Search API with Python, PHP, Ruby & JavaScript Examples

Have you ever felt the need for a sophisticated web search feature in your app or your website? An efficient web search capability can significantly elevate and enhance the overall user experience for your users.

In today’s world where the internet has become ubiquitously accessible, web search engines have become an integral part of the digitally connected society. Search engines empower users to selectively sift through humongous amounts of openly available data over the web. Thus search engines facilitate seamless access to otherwise difficult-to-find content stored across the wider network of interconnected computers collectively termed as the internet.

The Web Search API is among the few powerful sets of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that facilitate web search by providing programmatic access to its users. It is ideal for developers looking to seamlessly integrate advanced search capabilities in their app or website! Using this API, one can search across billions of web pages and images in addition to news, all with a simple API call!

What is Web Search API?

The Web Search API is a powerful Application Programming Interface (API) that allows programmatic access to users for searching across data and content on the web. The API supports searching across web pages, images as well as news. In addition to these features, it also facilitates spell check and auto-complete suggestions based on user queries.

How does Web Search API work?

The Web Search API leverages the power of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence under its hood, to meticulously match user queries and deliver the most relevant and accurate search results. The technology that powers Web Search API uses neuroscience-inspired Artificial Intelligence to effectively tackle the “web search bootstrapping” problem, faced by numerous search engines. Thus this enabled the development of an independent web search engine from scratch, in the form of the Web Search API.

The API provides different endpoints to its users for retrieval of web pages, images, and news articles, in addition, to spell check and autocomplete suggestions. Thus the Web Search API is cost-effective, efficient and facilitates seamless integration, access and retrieval of data over the web.

Who is Web Search API for exactly?

The primary user group for the Web Search API is Application Developers, Start-Ups as well as Large Enterprises, who desire to integrate a sophisticated web search feature in their app/website. The multifaceted Web Search API that facilitates search-as-a-service, is intended to empower its users to further enable their customers to search the internet for relevant content in the form of web pages, images as well as news!

How to connect to the Web Search API Tutorial – Step by Step

The following is a step-by-step tutorial for connecting to the Web Search API.

Step 1: Sign Up on RapidAPI

A RapidAPI account is required to connect to the Web Search API. You can sign up for an account by navigating to the RapidAPI website and clicking on the Sign-Up button at the top right!

RapidAPI supports signing up using Google, Github or Facebook.

Step 2: Subscribing to the Web Search API

Having signed up and logged in to RapidAPI, you would need to navigate to the Web Search API page on RapidAPI platform to connect to the API.

You would need to click on the “Subscribe to Test” button on this page to subscribe to the Web Search API.

Clicking on “Subscribe to Test” would take you to the Pricing Page of the Web Search API. The API has a Freemium form of Subscription. To test the API connection and get started, you may select the Basic Plan which is free and has a hard limit quota of 100 requests per day.

Clicking on the “Select Plan” button corresponding to the “Basic” column would show you a message saying that you have been subscribed to the plan.

You can now click on the “Test Endpoints” button to proceed with testing the API connection.

Step 3: Test the API Connection

This would take you to the main page of the Web Search API. We will test the API connection with the “webSearch” endpoint of the API. So please click on the “webSearch” in the list in the left-most section of the page. You should see the screen as below.

You may scroll down in the center section to observe and note the parameters that are to be sent with the request to the “webSearch” endpoint. The parameter “q” has been set to “taylor swift” indicating that we would be querying the “webSearch” endpoint with the query string as “taylor swift”.

You can go ahead and click on “Test Endpoint”. A successful connection would result in a “200 OK” response in the Results tab on this page. You should also be able see the search results returned for the query string “taylor swift”.

Now that you have subscribed and tested the connection to the Web Search API, let’s learn more about its usage!

Explanation of the Web Search API Endpoints 

The Web Search API has six endpoints targeted for specific functionalities for its users. The endpoints with relevant details on their usage are as follows:

Trending News

This endpoint facilitates fetching of news articles that are trending on the web and social networks.

This endpoint requires two parameters:

• • “pageNumber” – indicating the maximum number of pages to be returned in the response
  • “pageSize” – indicating the number of items per page with the maximum permissible “pageSize” of 50.

In addition to these two required parameters, two optional parameters include “withThumbnails” – a boolean value for controlling whether the search results be shown with or without thumbnails; and “location” string for retrieving location specific trending news articles. The supported locations are: “us”, “in”, or “uk”. If empty, the API returns top stories from all over the world.

Spell Check

This endpoint facilitates checking of spelling for a given string.

This endpoint requires one parameter:

• • “text” – The text string to check for spelling errors.

Web Search

This endpoint facilitates fetching of relevant web pages for a given query string.

This endpoint requires four parameters:

• • “q” – indicating the user’s search query string
  • “pageNumber” – indicating the maximum number of pages to be returned in the response
  • “pageSize” – indicating the number of items per page with the maximum permissible “pageSize” of 50.
  • “autoCorrect” – a boolean value indicating the preference to auto-correct the user’s query string if it has spelling errors

In addition to these four required parameters, one optional parameter includes “safeSearch” indicating the preference to filter results for adult content.

Image Search

This endpoint facilitates fetching of relevant images for a given query string.

This endpoint requires four parameters:

• • “q” – indicating the user’s search query string
  • “pageNumber” – indicating the maximum number of pages to be returned in the response
  • “pageSize” – indicating the number of items per page with the maximum permissible “pageSize” of 50.
  • “autoCorrect” – a boolean value indicating the preference to auto-correct the user’s query string if it has spelling errors

In addition to these four required parameters, one optional parameter includes “safeSearch” indicating the preference to filter results for adult content.

News Search

This endpoint facilitates fetching of relevant news articles for a given query string.

This endpoint requires four parameters:

• • “q” – indicating the user’s search query string
  • “pageNumber” – indicating the maximum number of pages to be returned in the response
  • “pageSize” – indicating the number of items per page with the maximum permissible “pageSize” of 50.
  • “autoCorrect” – a boolean value indicating the preference to auto-correct the user’s query string if it has spelling errors

In addition to these four required parameters, four optional parameters include – “safeSearch” indicating the preference to filter results for adult content, “withThumbnails” – a boolean value for controlling whether the search results be shown with or without thumbnails, “fromPublishedDate” and “toPublishedDate” indicating the time interval for the news articles to be fetched.

The dates for the optional parameters “fromPublishedDate” and “toPublishedDate” are to be provided in the format as –  “2015-05-16T05:50:06”. It is recommended for the users to check out the support docs for other supported DateTime formats.

Auto Complete

This endpoint facilitates generation of auto-complete suggestions.

This endpoint requires one parameter:

• • “text” – The text string to begin generation of auto-complete suggestions.

How to use the Web Search API with Python?

The following code snippet depicts the request with the required parameters to the “webSearch” endpoint of the Web Search API with Python. It uses the “requests” library to send a GET request to the endpoint with the parameters specified in the “querystring” dictionary.

The “x-rapidapi-key” value in the “headers” dictionary would need to be replaced with your actual key which can be obtained from the Web Search API’s page for the “webSearch” endpoint in the Header Parameters section.

import requests

url = "https://contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com/api/Search/WebSearchAPI"

querystring = {"q":"taylor swift","pageNumber":"1","pageSize":"10","autoCorrect":"true"}

headers = {
    'x-rapidapi-key': "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    'x-rapidapi-host': "contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com"
    }

response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers, params=querystring)

print(response.text)

How to use the Web Search API with PHP?

The following code snippet depicts the request with the required parameters to the “webSearch” endpoint of the Web Search API with PHP. It uses the “curl” function of PHP to send a GET request to the endpoint with the parameters specified in the “CURLOPT_URL”.

The “x-rapidapi-key” value in the “CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER” object would need to be replaced with your actual key which can be obtained from the Web Search API’s page for the “webSearch” endpoint in the Header Parameters section.

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, [
    CURLOPT_URL => "https://contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com/api/Search/WebSearchAPI?q=taylor%20swift&pageNumber=1&pageSize=10&autoCorrect=true",
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
    CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
    CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
    CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
    CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
    CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET",
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        "x-rapidapi-host: contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com",
        "x-rapidapi-key: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
    ],
]);

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($err) {
    echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
    echo $response;
}

How to use the Web Search API with Ruby?

The following code snippet depicts the request with the required parameters to the “webSearch” endpoint of the Web Search API with Ruby. The “x-rapidapi-key” value in the “request” object would need to be replaced with your actual key which can be obtained from the Web Search API’s page for the “webSearch” endpoint in the Header Parameters section.

require 'uri'
require 'net/http'
require 'openssl'

url = URI("https://contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com/api/Search/WebSearchAPI?q=taylor%20swift&pageNumber=1&pageSize=10&autoCorrect=true")

http = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port)
http.use_ssl = true
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url)
request["x-rapidapi-key"] = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
request["x-rapidapi-host"] = 'contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com'

response = http.request(request)
puts response.read_body

How to use the Web Search API with JavaScript?

The following code snippet depicts the request with the required parameters to the “webSearch” endpoint of the Web Search API with Javascript. It uses JQuery’s “ajax” function to send a GET request to the endpoint with the parameters specified in the “settings” object.

The “x-rapidapi-key” value in the “headers” object would need to be replaced with your actual key which can be obtained from the Web Search API’s page for the “webSearch” endpoint in the Header Parameters section.

const settings = {
    "async": true,
    "crossDomain": true,
    "url": "https://contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com/api/Search/WebSearchAPI?q=taylor%20swift&pageNumber=1&pageSize=10&autoCorrect=true",
    "method": "GET",
    "headers": {
        "x-rapidapi-key": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
        "x-rapidapi-host": "contextualwebsearch-websearch-v1.p.rapidapi.com"
    }
};

$.ajax(settings).done(function (response) {
    console.log(response);
});

Alternatives to the Web Search API

A few alternatives APIs that provide advanced search capabilities similar to the Web Search API are:

• Google Search
  • This API facilitates searching for research articles on Google Scholar in addition to web pages, images as well as news articles over the web.
• Bing Web Search
  • This API enables searching for web results, images, local businesses, news, videos, and visuals.
• Bing News Search
  • This API facilitates searching for news articles over the web.
• Bing Image Search
  • This API enables searching for images over the web.
• NewsCatcher
  • This API facilitates searching for news articles by any topic, country, language, website, or keyword.

What are the benefits of Web Search API?

The Web Search API is a multifaceted Application Programming Interface(API) that efficiently facilitates search-as-a-service. It allows searching for relevant web pages, images, and news articles – trending and current based on a user query. In addition to these functionalities, the API also provides spell-checking and auto-complete suggestions for user queries. Given the wide spectrum of cost-effective and efficient search-based features that the Web Search API has to offer, it forms an apt choice for users looking to explore an AI-backed efficient search-as-a-service API!

Summary

The Web Search API is a powerful tool for app developers, intended for seamless integration of advanced search capabilities in an app or a website. The API thus enables its users to search the internet for relevant content in the form of web pages, images, and news articles.