Why should you care?

Amazon-style search is expected in e-commerce APIs. Server-side search keeps payloads small.

See it live — copy this example

Create a Web API (dotnet new webapi), paste the example, run dotnet run, test in Swagger.

if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(q))
{
    var term = q.Trim();
    query = query.Where(p => p.Name.Contains(term) || p.Description.Contains(term));
}

Run Example »

Edit the code and click Run — like W3Schools Try it Yourself.

What happened?

• Contains may not use index — full-text or dedicated search engine (Elasticsearch) at scale.
• Trim and limit q length.

Try it yourself

1. Add q query param to GET products.
2. Seed products with varied names.
3. Search partial match and empty q.
4. Change a route URL or DTO property and save — test again in Swagger or curl.
5. Return the wrong status code on purpose (404 instead of 200) and see what the client shows.

Remember

Search via query string q. Combine with pagination. Plan full-text for huge catalogs.