Question

When try to create a new API request with the Windows Azure new Bing based API, Using the code below

$url= 'https://'.$this->m_host.'/Web?Query={keyword}&Adult=%27Off%27&$top=50&$format=Atom';     

        $url=str_replace('{keyword}', urlencode($this->m_keywords), $url);

        // Replace this value with your account key
                    $accountKey = $this->key;

                    $WebSearchURL = $url;

                    $context = stream_context_create(array(
                        'http' => array(
                            'proxy' => 'tcp://127.0.0.1:8888',
                            'request_fulluri' => true,
                            'header'  => "Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode($accountKey . ":" . $accountKey)
                        )
                    ));

                    $request = $WebSearchURL;
                    $response = file_get_contents($request, 0, $context);

        print_r($response);

i get following error.

Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: 
Couldn't connect to server in /home/xxxxx on line 43

Warning: file_get_contents(https://api.datamarket.azure.com/ 
failed to open stream: operation failed in /home/xxxx/ bing_search.php on line 43

Any idea why this fails ? or is it best to use the CURL Library than the file_get_contents() ?

Answer 1

The below code works for me, it is to search news but it will work for web searches too.

Just replace appkey with your one, leave username as it is (i.e. username) since it is ignored by the server

function getBingResult($keyword)
{
    $credentials = "username:appkey";
    $url= "https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Data.ashx/Bing/Search/v1/News?Query=%27{keyword}%27". "&\$format=json";        
    $url=str_replace('{keyword}', urlencode($keyword), $url);
    $ch = curl_init();
    $headers = array(
       "Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode($credentials)
    );

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE); 
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,5);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
    curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, TRUE); 

    $rs = curl_exec($ch);
    $jsonobj = json_decode($rs);
    curl_close($ch);    
    return $jsonobj;
}

Testing the function:

$bingResult = getBingResult("John");
foreach($bingResult->d->results as $value)
{   
    echo '<pre>'."URL:". $value->Url.'</pre>';
    echo '<pre>'."Title:". $value->Title.'</pre>';
    echo '<pre>'."Description:". $value->Description.'</pre>';   
    echo '<pre>'."Source:". $value->Source.'</pre>';   
    echo '<pre>'."Date:". $value->Date.'</pre>';   
}