Bing Search API for NodeJS

Features

• Support all Bing Search API verticals
  • Web
  • Image
  • Video
  • News
  • Related search
  • Spelling suggestions
  • Composite
• Accurate counts for each vertical. Web being the most problematic.
• Abstracted pagination for large results.
• Concurrent requests for results sets larger than 50 results.
• Normalized JSON results.
• Automatically uses gzip

Getting Started

1. Sign-up for an account the Bing Search API via the Azure Market Place.
2. Use the Azure Data Explorer for the Bing Search API to see the results you can expect returned via the API.
3. Grab the account key from the Data Explorer.

Install

$ npm install bing.search --save

Usage

Basic example:

var Search = require('bing.search');
var util = require('util');

search = new Search('account_key_123');

search.web('Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria',
  {top: 5},
  function(err, results) {
    console.log(util.inspect(results, 
      {colors: true, depth: null}));
  }
);

Output:

[ { id: 'e66c09f5-3317-4227-aee7-bc5dec3aec43',
    title: 'Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria',
    description: 'Neapolitan pizzeria located...',
    displayUrl: 'tuttabellapizza.com',
    url: 'http://tuttabellapizza.com/' },
  { id: '94b5a08a-6148-4832-9077-98245f3e1b42',
    title: 'Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria - Columbia City',
    description: 'Tutta Bella Columbia City...',
    displayUrl: 'www.tuttabella.com/tuttabellacc/index.php',
    url: 'http://www.tuttabella.com/tuttabellacc/index.php' },
  { id: '11bf839d-ce9e-4215-9b55-d663bdd17b98',
    title: 'Tutta Bella Menu - Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria',
    description: 'Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria - Columbia City...',
    displayUrl: 'www.tuttabella.com/menu',
    url: 'http://www.tuttabella.com/menu/' },
  { id: 'da706086-5566-414b-b70f-2648e762cdf6',
    title: 'Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria - Crossroads',
    description: 'Ciao! Come visit us in our newest Tutta Bella location...',
    displayUrl: 'tuttabella.com/tuttabellacr/index.php',
    url: 'http://tuttabella.com/tuttabellacr/index.php' },
  { id: '4d4d0961-bdd1-406f-aa80-39d067318c49',
    title: 'Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria - Westlake',
    description: 'Parking. Tutta Bella validates guest parking...',
    displayUrl: 'www.tuttabella.com/TuttaBellaWL',
    url: 'http://www.tuttabella.com/TuttaBellaWL/' } ]

new Search(accountKey, [parallelLimit], [useGzip])

The accountKey is Bing Search API account key provided by the Azure market place. parallelLimit is the number of search results pages fetched in parallel for a given query. The default is 10. useGzip defaults to true.

Available methods:

• counts(query, [options], callback) . query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • market
  • sources defaults to all sources.

  Format of results to callback:

  { web: 334,
    image: 20400,
    video: 33400,
    news: 1460 }
  

• web(query, [options], callback) "Web" only search. query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • top default is 50
  • skip default is 0
  • market

  Format of results to callback:

  [ { id: '...',
      title: '...',
      description: '...',
      url: '...' },
     ...
  ]
  
  

• images(query, [options], callback) "Image" only search. query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • top default is 50
  • skip default is 0
  • market

  Format of results to callback:

  [ { id: '...',
      title: '...',
      url: 'http://...',
      sourceUrl: 'http://...',
      displayUrl: '...',
      width: 1025,
      height: 1600,
      size: 136701,
      type: 'image/jpeg',
      thumbnail:
      { url: 'http://...',
        type: 'image/jpg',
        width: 192,
        height: 300,
        size: 6946 }
    },
     ...
  ]
  

• videos(query, [options], callback) "Video" only search. query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • top default is 50
  • skip default is 0
  • market

  Format of results to callback:

  [ { id: '...',
      title: '...',
      url: 'https://...',
      displayUrl: 'http://...',
      runtime: 62000,
      thumbnail:
      { url: 'http://...',
        type: 'image/jpg',
        width: 160,
        height: 120,
        size: 18423 } },
     ...
  ]
  

• news(query, [options], callback) "News" only search. query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • top default is 15
  • skip default is 0
  • market

  Format of results to callback:

  [ { id: '...',
      title: '...',
      source: '...',
      url: 'http://...',
      description: '...',
      date: [Date Object] },
     ...
  ]
  

• related(query, [options], callback) "RelatedSearch" only search. query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • top default is 50
  • skip default is 0
  • market

  Format of results to callback:

  [ { query: '...',
      url: 'http://...' },
     ...
  ]
  

• spelling(query, [options], callback) "SpellingSuggestions" only search. query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • top default is 50
  • skip default is 0
  • market

  callback's result is a list of alternate query spellings as strings.

• composite(query, [options], callback) "Composite" searches all of the provided sources. query is the search query. options is a dictionary with permissible values below -- it can be ommitted. callback takes an error and a results object.

  The following options can be provided:

  • top default is 50
  • skip default is 0
  • sources defaults to all sources
  • market

  Format of results to callback:

  { web: [ ... ],
    images: [ ... ],
    videos: [ ... ],
    news: [ ... ],
    spelling: [ ... ],
    related: [ ... ]
  }
  

  Each of the sources with in the composite result follows is the same format returned by each of the individual source searches.

Debugging

TODOs

• Better API error messages
• Support WebSearchOptions
• Support Adult params
• Support Latitude and Longitude
• Support WebFileType
• Support ImageFilters
• Support VideoFilters and VideoSortBy
• Support NewsCategory, NewsLocation, NewsSortBy
• Adjust https max sockets based on concurrent level
• Support smaller pagination for news

Changes

• 1.0
  • Initial support for all Bing Search API sources