[scribd-platform-talk] How to search for documents tagged with some keyword?

[MastaBaba]

Combining info on the API call docs.search and information on how to
use search queries on http://www.scribd.com/developers/search_help, I
can only deduce that searching for documents matching the keyword
"tanzania" I will have to request the contents of the following call:

http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.search&api_key=MY_KEY&query=%40tags+%22tanzania%22&scope=all

The query is...

@tags "tanzania"

...but urlencoded.

However, instead of documents tagged with "tanzania", I end up with
documents matching "tanzania", in either tags, title or description.
This is obviously not desirable.

Am I doing something wrong, or is it not possible to search for
documents tagged with certain tags using the API?

Greets,

Babak

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[Mike Watts]

It looks like the search documentation is out of date. The query
string should look like this:
http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.search&api_key=MY_KEY&query=tags%3Atanzania&scope=all

In addition, we found (and are the process of fixing) a related
problem preventing this from working properly.


--Watts

--
Mike Watts
mwa...@scribd.com

[Simon Wistow]

On Thu, May 06, 2010 at 02:35:44PM -0700, Mike Watts said:
> It looks like the search documentation is out of date. The query
> string should look like this:
> http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.search&api_key=MY_KEY&query=tags%3Atanzania&scope=all

@tags=tanzania should also work as well

[MastaBaba]

Thanks. But this isn't working at all, at the moment, right?

Also, the API responses I get sometimes are empty. Sometimes empty,
sometimes not, making the exact same calls. Obviously, this makes it
impossible for me to deploy this in a production environment.

Can you let us know when you've resolved the issue with searching for
tagged documents? Thanks!

Babak

On May 7, 1:47 am, Simon Wistow <si...@scribd.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 06, 2010 at 02:35:44PM -0700, Mike Watts said:
>
> > It looks like the search documentation is out of date.  The query
> > string should look like this:

> >http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.search&api_key=MY_KEY&query=tag...

[Simon Wistow]

On May 7, 12:33 am, MastaBaba <babak.fakhamza...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Can you let us know when you've resolved the issue with searching for
> tagged documents? Thanks!

Can you give it a try now?

Either

query=tags:tanzania

or

query=@tags "tanzania"

should work.

> Also, the API responses I get sometimes are empty. Sometimes empty,
> sometimes not, making the exact same calls. Obviously, this makes it
> impossible for me to deploy this in a production environment.

This is more worrying. I think I may have found a potential reason but
if it keeps happening then please let me know.

Thanks, and sorry for the glitches - we've completely replaced the old
search infrastructure and there's some edge cases between the old
system and the new syste,.

Simon

[MastaBaba]

The tag search is now working for me, thanks!

I notice that a search for tags:tanzania also returns documents tagged
with, say, "tanzania holiday". Is there a way in which this can be
avoided?

Also, I do still get empty results regularly. I would guess perhaps
some 50% of the times. It's not like the requests time out, because
the responses are returned fairly fast, in a few seconds or so. And
there's no error code or anything, which is returned, just an empty
page.

Greets,

Babak

[Simon Wistow]

On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 01:23:06AM -0700, MastaBaba said:
> I notice that a search for tags:tanzania also returns documents tagged
> with, say, "tanzania holiday". Is there a way in which this can be
> avoided?

I'll look into it

> Also, I do still get empty results regularly. I would guess perhaps
> some 50% of the times. It's not like the requests time out, because
> the responses are returned fairly fast, in a few seconds or so. And
> there's no error code or anything, which is returned, just an empty
> page.

Hmm, that's a bit worrying - I'll dig into that as well.

[systemaddict]

I can confirm this finding.

My search is also returning empty results very frequently (I thought
this had to do with hickups during the implementation of the new
indexer).

[Simon Wistow]

On Sun, May 09, 2010 at 10:33:12PM -0700, systemaddict said:
> I can confirm this finding.
>
> My search is also returning empty results very frequently (I thought
> this had to do with hickups during the implementation of the new
> indexer).

Can either one of you send me a sample API call to <myfirstname> [at]
scribd.com

Thanks, and sorry for the problems.

[MastaBaba]

Hi Simon,

I somehow didn't see this request earlier.

The calls I make are extremely straightforward. Here's one:

http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.search&api_key=MY_KEY&query=test&scope=all

I tried this one just now, and it came up empty.

I'll send this to your email as well.

Cheers,

Babak

[MastaBaba]

Related to this, how do I request documents that match two or more
keywords.

I'm trying the query "tags:amsterdam,holland", '@tags= "amsterdam"
"holland"', but the best I get is documents that match one of the
keywords, not all keywords.

How to proceed?

Babak

On May 13, 2:50 pm, MastaBaba <babak.fakhamza...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Simon,
>
> I somehow didn't see this request earlier.
>
> The calls I make are extremely straightforward. Here's one:
>

> http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.search&api_key=MY_KEY&query=tes...