intelligence-SimilarProducts

Similar Products Bot Sample

A sample bot that illustrates how to use the Bing Image Search API to find visually similar products from an image stream or a URL.Here's a demo of this bot in a web chat.

Prerequisites

The minimum prerequisites to run this sample are:

• The latest update of Visual Studio 2015. You can download the community version here for free.
• The Bot Framework Emulator. To install the Bot Framework Emulator, download it from here. Please refer to this documentation article to know more about the Bot Framework Emulator.
• This sample currently uses a free trial Microsoft Bing Search API key with limited QPS. Please subscribe here to obtain your own key and update the BingSearchApiKey key in Web.config file to try it out further.

Code Highlights

The main logic that handles calling the Bing Image Search API can be found in BingImageSearchService.cs.

The first method GetSimilarProductImagesAsync(string url) illustrates how to get the list of visually similar product from a URL. The image URL is encoded and sent in the get request query parameters (imgUrl):

/// <summary>
/// Gets a list of visually similar products from an image URL.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="url">The URL of an image.</param>
/// <returns>List of visually similar images.</returns>
public async Task<IList<ImageResult>> GetSimilarProductImagesAsync(string url)
{
    using (var httpClient = new HttpClient())
    {
        httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", ApiKey);

        string apiUrl = BingApiUrl + $"&imgUrl={HttpUtility.UrlEncode(url)}";

        var text = await httpClient.GetStringAsync(apiUrl);
        var response = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<BingImageResponse>(text);

        return response?.VisuallySimilarProducts?.Select(i => new ImageResult
            {
                HostPageDisplayUrl = i.HostPageDisplayUrl,
                HostPageUrl = i.HostPageUrl,
                Name = i.Name,
                ThumbnailUrl = i.ThumbnailUrl,
                WebSearchUrl = i.WebSearchUrl
            })
            .ToList();
    }
}

The second method GetSimilarProductImagesAsync(Stream stream) illustrates how to get the list of visually similar product from a stream. The main difference here is that the image content is posted in the request body:

/// <summary>
/// Gets a list of visually similar products from an image stream.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="stream">The stream to an image.</param>
/// <returns>List of visually similar images.</returns>
public async Task<IList<ImageResult>> GetSimilarProductImagesAsync(Stream stream)
{
    using (var httpClient = new HttpClient())
    {
        httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", ApiKey);

        var strContent = new StreamContent(stream);
        strContent.Headers.ContentDisposition = new ContentDispositionHeaderValue("form-data") { FileName = "Any-Name-Works" };

        var content = new MultipartFormDataContent();
        content.Add(strContent);

        var postResponse = await httpClient.PostAsync(BingApiUrl, content);
        var text = await postResponse.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
        var response = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<BingImageResponse>(text);

        return response?.VisuallySimilarProducts?.Select(i => new ImageResult
            {
                HostPageDisplayUrl = i.HostPageDisplayUrl,
                HostPageUrl = i.HostPageUrl,
                Name = i.Name,
                ThumbnailUrl = i.ThumbnailUrl,
                WebSearchUrl = i.WebSearchUrl
            })
            .ToList();
    }
}

Outcome

You will see the following when connecting the Bot to the Emulator and send it an image or a URL:

Input:

Output:

More Information

To get more information about how to get started in Bot Builder for .NET and Microsoft Bing Images Search API please review the following resources:

• Bot Builder for .NET
• Microsoft Bing Image Search API
• Microsoft Bing Image Search API Reference