Child Item

search_v2 API does not find some files

I'm not able to find some of the files that definitely exist in the dropbox folder. The API call comes back empty but I can download the file using the full path. Below is an example of such file, and the result of the query. I've tried different search strings and none of them worked for this specific file.

The API does find other similarly named files in the same folder. It just seem to selectively fail for some files. How can I troubleshot this?

{
  "name": "KC3NIH_de_WB0TEV_NAQPSSB_USB_20210116_204712Z_14MHz.mp3",
  "path_lower": "/naqpssb_2021/kc3nih_de_wb0tev_naqpssb_usb_20210116_204712z_14mhz.mp3",
  "path_display": "/NAQPSSB_2021/KC3NIH_de_WB0TEV_NAQPSSB_USB_20210116_204712Z_14MHz.mp3",
  "id": "id:flgIB4rfIlAAAAAAAAByIg",
  "client_modified": "2021-01-16T20:47:33Z",
  "server_modified": "2021-01-18T03:20:42Z",
  "rev": "5b92434fef753560e3bbc",
  "size": 180975,
  "is_downloadable": true,
  "content_hash": "ac06c9d88742b0cb113b5620bba7892f46a9c95f151ad14ed47de4e580ca5fb8"
}

Find more posts tagged with

API

Abuse

Comments

Greg-DB

The results from /2/files/search_v2 aren't always exhaustive unfortunately, but we can check on this internally if you'd like. It'd best if you open an API ticket if so, preferably while signed in to the relevant account if possible (if it's one you control). Thanks!

jjsk

Hello I will open a ticket, however this sounds like an indexing problem with the new search API. a search by file name should NOT fail, otherwise what is the point of storing files in the dropbox if you can't find them later.

when you say the search is not "exhaustive" what does this mean exactly? Is dropbox going to address the root cause?

Greg-DB

The /2/files/search_v2 documentation currently says:

Recent changes may not immediately be reflected in search results due to a short delay in indexing. Duplicate results may be returned across pages. Some results may not be returned.

I can't promise if/when that may be updated, but I'll pass this along as a feature request. Thanks for the feedback!

jjsk

> Some results may not be returned.

it sounds like something is fundamentally broken with this API and it should not have been released to production.

things were fine in the past, but now i have users of the app reporting random failures.

Anything you can do to address this would be appreciated.

Greg-DB

Thanks for the note! I can't make any promises myself, but I've sent this along to the team.