Network Programming in .NET

The UK have a very open attitude to their Company registration data, they have bulk data downloads, and a very open API that allows you to read lots of public domain data about UK companies. This is an example in C# that uses this API to return a list of officers (Board memebers) of a UK company, given a UK company number.

private static List GetOfficers(string companyNumber)
{
ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls12;
var strUrl = “https://api.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/{0}/officers”;
strUrl = string.Format(strUrl, companyNumber);
var credentials = Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(“xxxxxxxx:”));
var wc = new WebClient();
wc.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.Authorization] = string.Format(“Basic {0}”, credentials);
try
{
var strResult = wc.DownloadString(strUrl);
var jResult = JObject.Parse(strResult);
return jResult[“items”].Select(jOfficer => new Officer(jOfficer)).ToList();
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
var resp = new StreamReader(ex.Response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
Console.WriteLine(resp);
return null;
}
}

You will need your own API key, and change the “xxxxxxxx” in the code above. Also, you’ll need to implement your own Officer class, which is outside the scope of this example.