AdWords API Bug? Double quotes not escaped any more in PRODUCT_PARTITION_REPORT.ProductGroup

[Manuel Rodriguez Guimérans]

Hello,

up until a few days ago (around 2020-06-15, from what I can tell) the PRODUCT_PARTITION_REPORT.ProductGroup values returned by the AdWords API had double quotes properly escaped, making each product group value nicely parseable into its individual components. However, that escaping is now missing, which makes the information unparseable due to ambiguity. Is this a bug in the AdWords API? Any estimation on when would it get fixed?

Below an example. I'll be using single quotes to enclose string literals, as one would do in Bash or Python.

Let's imagine two product groups defined in terms of two product type values: 'foo' and 'foo"bar'. Up until 2020-06-15, those two groups would have been rendered in the PRODUCT_PARTITION_REPORT.ProductGroup field as:

- '* / product type = "foo"'
- '* / product type = "foo""bar"' (notice the double quote between 'foo' and 'bar' being escaped)

but now 'foo"bar' is rendered as:
- '* / product type = "foo"bar"' (notice the double quote between 'foo' and 'bar' is not escaped any more)

Encoding those ProductGroup values into CSV adds another layer of double quote escaping, but that's not relevant for the discussion and can be safely ignored.

Thanks in advance,

Manu

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Manu,

Thank you for reaching out. There have been no recent changes made to AdWords API. This could be an issue related to the client library so I would recommend posting it on the GitHub Issues Tracker of your client library as their team will be more equipped to assist you.

Regards,
Mitchell
Google Ads API Team

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[Manuel Rodriguez Guimérans]

Hi Mitchell,

thanks for your quick reply. However, I don't think this is related to any particular client library, as we haven't changed library version around that time or made any other changes in the affected services on our end. In order to verify that assumption, I've just tried fetching the same reports by using cURL directly (posting an XML report definition, as described here) and got identical results. I guess that discards client libraries as possible cause, right?

As a side effect, I came across a few extra pieces of information that might or might not be relevant:

* Not all ProductGroup values that contain a double quote lack proper escaping. Some of them are still escaped correctly. Incidentally, the ones I've seen still correctly escaped happened to have the double quote at the end of the string. That last detail could be irrelevant and attributed to chance, as my sample size is quite small, but maybe it was worth mentioning anyway.

* Reports downloaded many days ago, 2020-06-10 for example, have all ProductGroup values properly escaped. However, if today I download that same 2020-06-10 report, I get ProductGroup values without escaping. I guess this was to be expected anyway, considering that ProductGroup is a field of type "Attribute".

* Based on the "Change history" report, none of the affected product groups were modified around the time this issue manifested itself.

Any clue about what the cause might be, in light of these additional facts?

Thanks once again and regards,

Manu

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Manu,

If possible, could you please share an example of a downloaded report from before and after 2020-06-10 via Reply privately to author so I can see an example of what you're referring to?

[Manuel Rodriguez Guimérans]

I've just replied privately. Thanks.

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor Prod]

Hi Manu,

Thank you for providing that information. My team is looking into the issue and will let you know when there's an update.

[Manuel Rodriguez Guimérans]

Hi Mitchell,

looks like this issue was fixed around Jun 26th already. Thank you.

Regards,

Manu