Searching The Index In Azure Portal And Implementation Using Visual Studio

In this article we will see how to do searching in Azure portal and search implementation through Visual Studio.

Before starting I assume you have knowledge about how to create a search service, and how to create an index on the service. And if you want to know more read my previous articles:  Part-1, Part-2

Searching in the Azure Portal

In my previous article I created Azure search service and an index on it using import data.

Go to Indexes 

Search explorer -> enter query string to search -> Click Search -> Results shown below:

Query String – enter the string you want to search.

The text to search for All searchable fields are searched by default unless searchFields is specified.

To match any term, use * (this can be useful for Boolean filter queries). To read more about simple query syntax read msdn here

You can read more about filters using MSDN link here

NOTE
String comparisons are case sensitive [when you specify a filter]

For example - when we use:

then we will get the exact result:

 

BUT,

If we replace ‘Matthew’ with ‘matthew’ the result will be as shown:

So string comparisons are case sensitive. [when you specify a filter]

 

Implementation of Searching using Visual studio STEP 1: Create empty MVC web application

Open Visual studio

Click on File-> new-> Project

Select asp.net web application, enter project name as “searchingIndex” and click ok,

Choose empty MVC application and click ok:

Empty MVC application is created.

STEP 2 - Install Microsoft.Azure.search using NuGet Package manager

Right click on references and select Manage NuGet Pakages

OR,

Go to Tools -> NuGet Pakage Manager -> Manage NuGet Package for Solution

Search for Microsoft.azure.search

Click on Install,

Click on Accept,

Microsoft.Azure.Search is installed successfully as shown.

STEP 3 - Add Reference for System.Net.Http

Right click on references -> add reference

Search System.Net.Http and click ok

Reference added successfully in solution.

STEP 4 - Add a new empty controller

Right click on Controller folder -> click on Add -> Select Controller as shown.

Select MVC 5 controller - Empty

Name the controller as “HomeController” and click on Add.

Controller created as shown

 

STEP 5 - Declare Service Name

Define a variable to hold service name as we created in the Azure portal. 

//declare serch service name - host portion of search service URL in azure portal
var sSearchService = "stestsearchservice";

The service name is the host portion of search service URL in Azure portal

STEP 6 - Declare apiKey

As specified on MSDN about api-Key

So under Azure search service -> click on keys – Copy Primary admin key

Use that apiKey here in the code.

public ActionResult Index() {
    //declare serch service name - host portion of search service URL in azure portal
    var sSearchService = "stestsearchservice";
    // apiKey here
    var sApiKey = "ADAFF3B1E329E4E1181DC88C23D49A37";
    //search client
    var sSearchClient = new SearchServiceClient(sSearchService, new SearchCredentials(sApiKey));
    //index client
    var sIndexClient = sSearchClient.Indexes.GetClient("azuresql-index");
    //define serach parameters
    SearchParameters sp = new SearchParameters() {
        SearchMode = SearchMode.All
    };
    //Grab collection of documents
    var sDocs = sIndexClient.Documents.Search("Affordable Sports Equipment", sp);
    return Json(sDocs.Results, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

STEP 7 - Search Service Client

Define the Search client [ import Microsoft.Azure.Search namespace]

Pass the ‘searchServiceName’ and ‘searchCredentials’ to searchServiceClient class as shown.

public ActionResult Index() {
    //declare serch service name - host portion of search service URL in azure portal
    var sSearchService = "stestsearchservice";
    // apiKey here
    var sApiKey = "ADAFF3B1E329E4E1181DC88C23D49A37";
    //search client
    var sSearchClient = new SearchServiceClient(sSearchService, new SearchCredentials(sApiKey));
    //index client
    var sIndexClient = sSearchClient.Indexes.GetClient("azuresql-index");
    //define serach parameters
    SearchParameters sp = new SearchParameters() {
        SearchMode = SearchMode.All
    };
    //Grab collection of documents
    var sDocs = sIndexClient.Documents.Search("Affordable Sports Equipment", sp);
    return Json(sDocs.Results, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

 Inside SearchCredentials we need to specify apiKey which is used to authenticate Azure Search service,

STEP 8 - Index Client

Now we are going to get index using searchSearvieclient and the using that index we will get Index client.

Index client is used to manage documents and query inside a specified index.

public ActionResult Index() {
    //declare serch service name - host portion of search service URL in azure portal
    var sSearchService = "stestsearchservice";
    // apiKey here
    var sApiKey = "ADAFF3B1E329E4E1181DC88C23D49A37";
    //search client
    var sSearchClient = new SearchServiceClient(sSearchService, new SearchCredentials(sApiKey));
    //index client
    var sIndexClient = sSearchClient.Indexes.GetClient("azuresql-index");
    //define serach parameters
    SearchParameters sp = new SearchParameters() {
        SearchMode = SearchMode.All
    };
    //Grab collection of documents
    var sDocs = sIndexClient.Documents.Search("Affordable Sports Equipment", sp);
    return Json(sDocs.Results, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

 

STEP 9 - Define Search Parameters

There are two types of search modes,

1. All
2. Any (Default)

The following offers a good explanation:

To read more about operators in simple query syntax read here,

 

Specify the string you want to search

public ActionResult Index()
{
    //declare serch service name - host portion of search service URL in azure portal
    var sSearchService = "stestsearchservice";
    // apiKey here
    var sApiKey = "ADAFF3B1E329E4E1181DC88C23D49A37";
    //search client
    var sSearchClient = new SearchServiceClient(sSearchService, new SearchCredentials(sApiKey));
    //index client
    var sIndexClient = sSearchClient.Indexes.GetClient("azuresql-index");
    //define serach parameters
    SearchParameters sp = new SearchParameters() {
        SearchMode = SearchMode.All
    };
    //Grab collection of documents
    var sDocs = sIndexClient.Documents.Search("Affordable Sports Equipment", sp);
    return Json(sDocs.Results, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

 

Instead of returning view, I’ll return Json:

public ActionResult Index() {
    //declare serch service name - host portion of search service URL in azure portal
    var sSearchService = "stestsearchservice";
    // apiKey here
    var sApiKey = "ADAFF3B1E329E4E1181DC88C23D49A37";
    //search client
    var sSearchClient = new SearchServiceClient(sSearchService, new SearchCredentials(sApiKey));
    //index client
    var sIndexClient = sSearchClient.Indexes.GetClient("azuresql-index");
    //define serach parameters
    SearchParameters sp = new SearchParameters() {
        SearchMode = SearchMode.All
    };
    //Grab collection of documents
    var sDocs = sIndexClient.Documents.Search("Affordable Sports Equipment", sp);
    return Json(sDocs.Results, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

Run the solution, and we will get the search result in json as we saw in the portal.

 

Summary

In this article we saw,

• How to search in Azure portal using simple query string
• How to create a Visual Studio solution for searching

In the next article I’ll show you how to use $filter in searching the documents.

Keep reading!!!