Programmatically querying MSDN?

Question

Is there a way to query MSDN.com programmatically? Essentially I have a class name, namespace or other identifier and want to find the MSDN Documentation page, ideally passing in a version as well (.net 3.5, .net 4.0, Silverlight etc.)

I think I saw some API, but googling for "programatically query MSDN" wasn't very helpful, seems like MSDN is a bad term to google for...

Answer 1

MSDN provides a public service to publish documentation content: http://services.msdn.microsoft.com/ContentServices/ContentService.asmx

Example usage can be found here.

Answer 2

Take a look at some MSDN documentations. Looks like it is using this template:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/<Fully_Qualified_Name>(v=VS_Version).aspx
For example for HttpContext on .Net 4.
VS Versions:

• .Net 1.1: (v=VS.71)
• .Net 2.1: (v=VS.80)
• .Net 3.0: (v=VS.85)
• .Net 3.5: (v=VS.90)
• .Net 4.0: (v=VS.100)