How do I search MSDN online content programmatically

Hello All,

I'm a developer of a programming language platform, and I want to incorporate F1 context sensitive help into the product. Currently, if a user of the software hits F1 over the text "System.String", I use the Dexplore.AppObj.9.0 COM interface (the SearchEx function to be precise) to search for documentation. However this is flaky at best - I suspect it's success depends on what versions of VS are (or have been) installed.

What I'd like to do is spin up a browser pointed at an appropriate URL (like VS does). For example if I hit F1 over System.String in VS2012 the browser goes to the following URL:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/query/dev11.query?appId=Dev11IDEF1&l=EN-US&k=k(System.String);k(DevLang-csharp)&rd=true

Is there an API to do this sort of searching? or is there any documentation for the above URL to allow me to brew my own one up?

Thanks,

John.