Viewing Bing Search Results in RAD Studio Data Explorer

Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData ODBC Driver for Bing Search, you gain access to live Bing Search results within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve Bing Search results. This article will walk through connecting to Bing Search using the Data Explorer.

Configure a Connection to Bing Search

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To connect to Bing, set the ApiKey connection property. To obtain the API key, sign into Microsoft Cognitive Services and register for the Bing Search APIs.

Two API keys are then generated; select either one.

When querying tables, the SearchTerms parameter must be supplied in the WHERE clause.

Connecting to Bing Search Results Using Data Explorer

You can create a simple application for displaying Bing Search results by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for Bing Search and a new VCL Forms Application:

1. Open the Data Explorer in RAD Studio and expand FireDAC.
2. Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
3. Click Add New Connection.
4. Enter a name for the connection.
5. In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for Bing Search.
6. Back in the Data Explorer, expand the views for the connection.

7. Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a view (for example: VideoSearch) onto the form.

8. Select the VideoSearchView object on the form and set the Active property to true.

9. Right-click on the object, bind visually, and link everything (*) to a new control (TStringGrid).

10. Arrange the TStringGrid on the form and run the application to see the VideoSearch data.