Get total search results from Google

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone know whether if there is a way that I can directly send search query
to Google web service from within a java application and get the result back?

Basically I just need to know the total number of pages the result return. I know there used to be
a Google API called SOAP that let you do that but they discontinued it -_- and replace it with AJAX Search, which I am not sure how can I get it to work within java.

If anyone know a way or have other alternatives please let me know.

Cheer!

You can use the Google "AJAX" calls just like a regular HTTP call in Java. From the Google AJAX API:

Quote:

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the API exposes a raw RESTful interface that returns JSON encoded results that are easily processed by most languages and runtimes

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So, you will get the search results back in JSON format which can easily be parsed.

So you can do something like this:

Code:

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String query = "foo bar";
URL url = new  URL("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?start=0&rsz=large&v=1.0&q="  + query);
URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
connection.addRequestProperty("Referer", "http://www.somewebsite.com"); //this isn't needed

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));

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This will make the call to the Google AJAX site and return the response in the form of JSON. Now you just need to figure out how to parse it :P

There is a JSON Library that you can download and use in your application at http://www.json.org/java/.

Oh sweet, thank you very much!