Developers

C#.NET QuickStart

This QuickStart will walk you through the basics of accessing the NewsCred Platform API using the C#.NET programming language. Let's get started!

Downloading the C#.NET API Wrapper

Start by downloading our C#.NET API Wrapper. Once the download is completed, zip/tar it up and copy the newscred.dll file to your application folder.

You'll need a valid API Access Key to make API calls in production, you can request one here. For development and testing purposes, you can use this API Access Key: c4bcc3f7c9bf9ec159f51da0a86ca658.

Understanding Modules

The NewsCred Platform API consists of 5 different modules, here's what they do:

Article Module - API methods for searching and retrieving content related to articles.
Category Module - API methods for searching and retrieving content related to categories.
Topic Module - API methods for searching and retrieving content related to topics.
Source Module - API methods for searching and retrieving content related to sources.
Author Module - API methods for searching and retrieving content related to authors.

Let's set things up by importing these modules in your application. It's also good practice to keep your API Access Key in a globally accessible variable like this: 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections;

using NewsCred;

class QuickStart
{
        // ...
        static String accessKey = "c4bcc3f7c9bf9ec159f51da0a86ca658";
        
        // ...
}

Working with Articles

Now that you're all set up, let's start making API calls!

Every object in the NewsCred Platform, except Category objects, is assigned a globally unique ID called a GUID.
We can retrieve an article by it's GUID like this: 

// ...

// Get article by GUID
String guid = "c0992a44a782ac65a4baf81cecfa8b4a";
NewsCredArticle article = new NewsCredArticle(accessKey, guid);

Now, let's retrieve related articles to this article by simply adding one line of code: 

// ...

// Get related articles
List<NewsCredArticle> relatedArticles = article.GetRelatedArticles();

Sometimes you won't know the GUID of the article you're searching for. For these cases, every module (except Category) comes with a handy search method. Let's add some code to search and retrieve articles matching the query "obama": 

// ...

// Search articles
String query = "obama";
List<NewsCredArticle> seachedArticles = NewsCredArticle.Search(accessKey, query);

Filtering these search results is a piece of cake. All we have to do is pass in an optional dictionary of arguments like this: 

// ...

// Search articles with custom arguments
Hashtable options = new Hashtable();
options.Add("offset", 0);
options.Add("pagesize", 10);
options.Add("from_date", "");
options.Add("to_date", "");
options.Add("sort", "relevance");
options.Add("sources", new String[] { "1ce0362f2e764a95b0c7351c05a4eb19", "2c20eeebd3486973559db5b654d87771" });
options.Add("source_countries", new String[] { "us", "uk", "in", "qa", "ca" });
options.Add("categories", new String[] { "world", "u-s", "u-k", "sports", "entertainment", "travel", "business", "technology" });

List<NewsCredArticle> filteredArticles = NewsCredArticle.Search(accessKey, query, options);

For a complete guide to all our Article Module API methods, check out our API Reference.

Working with Categories

Next, let's explore categories.

The Category Module allows us to retrieve articles, images, topics and sources filtered by category. Categories don't have GUIDs. Instead, we use dashed names to identify them. Currently supported dashed category names are: "world", "u-s", "u-k", "europe", "asia", "technology", "business", "environment", "travel".

Let's write some code to retrieve a NewsCredCategory object: 

// ...

// Get category by dashed name
String dashedName = "technology";
NewsCredCategory technology = new NewsCredCategory(accessKey, dashedName);

Now that we've retrieved the technology category object, we can use it to get technology related content like this: 

// ...

// Get technology related articles
List<NewsCredArticle> technologyArticles = technology.GetRelatedArticles();

// Get technology related topics
List<NewsCredTopic> technologyTopics = technology.GetRelatedTopics();

// Get technology related sources
List<NewsCredSource> technologySources = technology.GetRelatedSources();

For more information about all our Category Module API methods, check out our API Reference.

Working with Topics

Now, let's take a look at topics.

The Topic Module let's us get related content by topic. It exposes a very powerful API that let's you easily retrieve articles, images, videos and more about different people, places, events, companies, organizations and products.

Let's start by retrieving the topic "Barack Obama" by it's GUID: 

// ...

// Get Barack Obama topic by GUID
String obamaGuid = "1e3f343e71de57fe9cc70b90c07e196e";
NewsCredTopic obama = new NewsCredTopic(accessKey, obamaGuid);

Now we can quickly retrieve content related to Barack Obama like this: 

// ...

// Get Barack Obama articles
List<NewsCredArticle> obamaArticles = obama.GetRelatedArticles();

// Get Barack Obama images
List<Hashtable> obamaImages = obama.GetRelatedImages();

// Get Barack Obama videos
List<Hashtable> obamaVideos = obama.GetRelatedVideos();

Next, lets retrieve other related topics to Barack Obama: 

// ...

// Get topics related to Barack Obama
List<NewsCredTopic> obamaRelatedTopics = obama.GetRelatedTopics();

What if we only want to retrieve related people to Barack Obama? No problem. All topics are categorized into different topic classifications. Currently supported topic classifications are: "person", "place", "event", "company", "organization" and "product". So all we really need to do is add an optional filter argument like this: 

// ...

// Get related people to Barack Obama
options.Add("topic_classifications", new String[] { "person" });
List<NewsCredTopic> obamaRelatedPeople = obama.GetRelatedTopics(options);

Last but not least, for times when you don't know the topic GUID or simply want to find interesting topics, you'll come to love the topic search method: 

// ...

// Search topics
query = "obama";
List<NewsCredTopic> searchedTopics = NewsCredTopic.Search(accessKey, query);

For more information about Topic Module API Methods, check out our API Reference.

That's it! Thanks for taking this whirlwind tour of some of the basic features of the NewsCred Platform API.

What To Do Next

We've only scratched the surface of what's possible with the NewsCred Platform API in this QuickStart.

For next steps, we recommend that you take a look at our exhaustive API Reference with more than 150 code samples to get you off on the right track.

If you need any help getting started, have any questions or feedback, feel free to drop us a line at
platform@newscred.com anytime. Cheers!

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