Google Spell Checker Api Asp.Net C#

In this article you will learn how to use the Google Spell Checker API in Asp.Net C# apps

The API is very simple,  spell checking is done through a XML http post to the following url

https://www.google.com/tbproxy/spell?lang=en:

Request XML structure

<? xmlversion=”1.0”encoding=”utf-8”?>
<spellrequesttextalreadyclipped=”0”ignoredups=”0”ignoredigits=”1”ignoreallcaps=”1“>
<text>Hotal</text>
</spellrequest >

The folloing are the Response XML from Google API

<? xmlversion=”1.0”encoding=”UTF-8“?>
<spellresulterror=”0”clipped=”0”charschecked=”12“>
<c o=”0”l=”5”s=”0″>Hotel Hotly Total Ital Hots </c>
</spellresult >

Tag	Description
o	The offset from the start of the text of the word
l	Length of misspelled word
s	Confidence of the suggestion
text	Tab delimited list of suggestions

See the complete code here

public static string DidYouMean(string aWord)
{
    string retValue = string.Empty;
    try
    {
        string uri = "http://www.google.com/tbproxy/spell?";
        using (WebClient webClient = new WebClient())
        {
            WebProxy myProxy = new WebProxy(@"127.0.0.1:48100", true);
            webClient.Proxy = myProxy;
            string postData = string.Format("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><spellrequest textalreadyclipped=\"0\" ignoredups=\"0\" ignoredigits=\"1\" "
                + "ignoreallcaps=\"1\"><text>{0}</text></spellrequest>", aWord);
            webClient.Headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
            byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(postData);
            byte[] response = webClient.UploadData(uri, "POST", bytes);
            string data = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(response);
            if (data != string.Empty)
            {
                retValue = Regex.Replace(data, @"<(.|\n)*?>", string.Empty).Split('\t')[0];
            }


        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    { }
    return retValue;
}


private void btnSearch_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    string word = DidYouMean(this.textBox1.Text);
    if (word != string.Empty)
    {
        this.label1.Text = word;
    }
}

http://www.sxlist.com/techref/spell.asp
http://didyoumean.info/