How can you search Google Programmatically Java API

Question

Does anyone know if and how it is possible to search Google programmatically - especially if there is a Java API for it.

Thanks in advance. Daniel

Answer 1

In the Terms of Service of google we can read:

5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.

So I guess the answer is No. More over the SOAP API is no longer available

Answer 2

Some facts:

1. Google offers a public search webservice API which returns JSON: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web. Documentation here

2. Java offers java.net.URL and java.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests.

3. JSON can in Java be converted to a fullworthy Javabean object using an arbitrary Java JSON API. One of the best is Google Gson.

Now do the math:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    String google = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=";
    String search = "stackoverflow";
    String charset = "UTF-8";

    URL url = new URL(google + URLEncoder.encode(search, charset));
    Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(url.openStream(), charset);
    GoogleResults results = new Gson().fromJson(reader, GoogleResults.class);

    // Show title and URL of 1st result.
    System.out.println(results.getResponseData().getResults().get(0).getTitle());
    System.out.println(results.getResponseData().getResults().get(0).getUrl());
}

With this Javabean class representing the most important JSON data as returned by Google (it actually returns more data, but it's left up to you as an exercise to expand this Javabean code accordingly):

public class GoogleResults {

    private ResponseData responseData;
    public ResponseData getResponseData() { return responseData; }
    public void setResponseData(ResponseData responseData) { this.responseData = responseData; }
    public String toString() { return "ResponseData[" + responseData + "]"; }

    static class ResponseData {
        private List<Result> results;
        public List<Result> getResults() { return results; }
        public void setResults(List<Result> results) { this.results = results; }
        public String toString() { return "Results[" + results + "]"; }
    }

    static class Result {
        private String url;
        private String title;
        public String getUrl() { return url; }
        public String getTitle() { return title; }
        public void setUrl(String url) { this.url = url; }
        public void setTitle(String title) { this.title = title; }
        public String toString() { return "Result[url:" + url +",title:" + title + "]"; }
    }

}

See also:

• How to fire and handle HTTP requests using java.net.URLConnection
• How to convert JSON to Java