Getting more than 10 results by Google Custom Search API V1 in Java

Question

I am using Google Custom Search API in Java to get results of Google in response to a query. I have written this code with the help of other posts, code is as follows:

    url = new URL("https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?key="+key+ "&cx="+ cx +"&q="+    searchText+"&alt=json"+"&start="+0+"&num="+30);
    HttpURLConnection conn2 = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
    System.out.println("Connection opened!");
    conn2.setRequestMethod("GET");
    conn2.setRequestProperty("Accept", "application/json");
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
    (conn2.getInputStream())));

The problem is that whenever I am using the above code without num and start parameters it is executing properly, but giving only top 10 results. So I have used num and start parameters. But they are creating problems. Here I cannot understand where to put the num and start parameters in the url. It is always giving HTTP 400 i.e. Bad Request. I have read the Documentation page, there also no clear instruction is given about where to put these two parameters in Url.

So if anyone helps me to solve this problem I will be really grateful. Thank you.

Answer 1

You can't do it that way. num can only be a maximum of 10. See

https://developers.google.com/custom-search/json-api/v1/reference/cse/list#num

num - unsigned integer
Number of search results to return. Valid values are integers between 1 and 10, inclusive.

To show more results, Google suggests making multiple calls, incrementing the start parameter as needed:

https://developers.google.com/custom-search/json-api/v1/reference/cse/list#start

start - unsigned integer The index of the first result to return. Valid value are integers starting 1 (default) and the second result is 2 and so forth. For example &start=11 gives the second page of results with the default "num" value of 10 results per page. Note: No more than 100 results will ever be returned for any query with JSON API, even if more than 100 documents match the query, so setting (start + num) to more than 100 will produce an error. Note that the maximum value for num is 10.