Tutorials ASP.NET Core Web API Tutorial
Services in ASP.NET Core Web API — Complete Guide
Services in ASP.NET Core Web API — Complete Guide: free step-by-step lesson with examples, common mistakes, and interview tips — part of ASP.NET Core Web API Tutorial on Toolliyo Academy.
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ASP.NET Core Web API Tutorial · Lesson 20 of 100
Searching in ASP.NET Core Web API
Beginner → Intermediate → Advanced → Professional
Beginner · 1 — API foundations · ~6 min · Module 2: CRUD APIs
What is this?
Search matches text — ?q=cotton+shirt searches Name and Description with Contains or full-text search. Often combined with filters and pagination.
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
- Add q query param to GET products.
- Seed products with varied names.
- Search partial match and empty q.
- Change a route URL or DTO property and save — test again in Swagger or curl.
- 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.