How to Create a Quick Bing Searcher in Visual Basic

Submitted by Yorkiebar on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 06:01.

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Introduction: Welcome to my tutorial on how to create a quick bing searcher in visual basic. It will search a given query and launch the first three links. Steps of Creation: Step 1: First we want to import some namespaces and create a function get a list of strings between two points within a given string...

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Imports System.Net
Imports System.IO

Private Function GetBetweenAll(ByVal Source As String, ByVal Str1 As String, ByVal Str2 As String) As String()
    Dim Results, T As New List(Of String)
    T.AddRange(Regex.Split(Source, Str1))
    T.RemoveAt(0)
    For Each I As String In T
        Results.Add(Regex.Split(I, Str2)(0))
    Next
    Return Results.ToArray
End Function

Step 2: Now we want to initialize the search query. We must replace any spaces with a plus symbol in order for it to work properly in the url.

Dim q As String = TextBox1.Text
If (q.Contains(" ")) Then q.Replace(" ", "+")

Step 3: Now we want to go to the search query page and retrieve the source code. We then want to extract all the links within the page.

Dim link As String = "http://www.bing.com/search?q=" & q & "&go=&qs=bs&form=QBLH&filt=all"
Dim r As HttpWebRequest = HttpWebRequest.Create(link)
Dim re As HttpWebResponse = r.GetResponse()
Dim src As String = New StreamReader(re.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd()
Dim links As String() = GetBetweenAll(src, "<h3><a href=""", """")

Step 4: Now we want to run through all the links and add the first three that are stand alone links (http://) to a new list. We then want to run them all.

Dim urls As New List(Of String)
Dim i As Integer = 0
Do Until urls.Count() >= 3
    If (links(i).StartsWith("http://")) Then urls.Add(links(i))
    i += 1
Loop
For Each u As String In urls
    Diagnostics.Process.Start(u)
Next

Project Complete! Below is the full source code and download to the project files.

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
Imports System.Net
Imports System.IO
 
Public Class Form1
    Private Function GetBetweenAll(ByVal Source As String, ByVal Str1 As String, ByVal Str2 As String) As String()
        Dim Results, T As New List(Of String)
        T.AddRange(Regex.Split(Source, Str1))
        T.RemoveAt(0)
        For Each I As String In T
            Results.Add(Regex.Split(I, Str2)(0))
        Next
        Return Results.ToArray
    End Function
    Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim q As String = TextBox1.Text
        If (q.Contains(" ")) Then q.Replace(" ", "+")
        Dim link As String = "http://www.bing.com/search?q=" & q & "&go=&qs=bs&form=QBLH&filt=all"
        Dim r As HttpWebRequest = HttpWebRequest.Create(link)
        Dim re As HttpWebResponse = r.GetResponse()
        Dim src As String = New StreamReader(re.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd()
        Dim links As String() = GetBetweenAll(src, "<h3><a href=""", """")
        Dim urls As New List(Of String)
        Dim i As Integer = 0
        Do Until urls.Count() >= 3
            If (links(i).StartsWith("http://")) Then urls.Add(links(i))
            i += 1
        Loop
        For Each u As String In urls
            Diagnostics.Process.Start(u)
        Next
    End Sub
End Class

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