Freesound API search suddenly always returns the same items

[Hanna Becker]

We noticed today that the freesound search we integrated in our app suddenly always returns the same items, no matter what search term we use.

Below is the JS code we use to search.

It seems to be related to the tag filter, because if I remove it, the search results change with the query. However, the search query as we have it worked fine up until at least December 13 (we have tests for it in our CI pipeline that still passed on that day). We haven't touched that code for a couple of months.

const FreeSound = require('freesound-client').default;
const freeSound = new FreeSound();

freeSound.setToken(<API_TOKEN>);

const { searchTerm } = event.arguments;

const response = await freeSound.textSearch('', {
  page: 1,
  filter: `duration:[1.0 TO 15.0]AND(license:"Creative Commons 0")AND(original_filename:(*${searchTerm}*))OR(tag:(*${searchTerm}*))`,
  sort: 'rating_desc',
  fields: 'id,duration,name,license,previews,type,tags',
});

console.log(JSON.stringify(response));

[Frederic Font Corbera]

Hi,

This seems to be a bug we introduced yesterday after some changes in the search engine. We'll work to fix that,

Cheers,

frederic

--

Frederic Font - ffont.github.io

Music Technology Group, UPF - mtg.upf.edu

Freesound - freesound.org

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[Frederic Font Corbera]

Hi again,

We've been investigating the issue. If I understand correctly the goal of your query, I would say it is not properly formulated as the parenthesis are not set correctly. I understand that what you want to achieve is to search for sounds which match the query terms either in their name or in their tags, and that they are CC0 license and with a duration of 1 to 15 seconds. Therefore, the overall structure should be "duration_filter AND license_filter AND (matching_filename OR matching_tag)", but currently it is "duration_filter AND (license_filter) AND (matching_filename) OR (matching_tag)". I guess that after our last update of the search engine the interpretation of the parenthesis changed, but if you put the parenthesis correctly, then the query works as expected. So basically your filter shold be:

`duration:[1.0 TO 15.0]AND(license:"Creative Commons 0")AND(original_filename:(*${searchTerm}*) OR tag:(*${searchTerm}*))`

That said, I think a better way to achieve similar results is to set the "query" paramter to the search term, and then use the "filter" parameter only for the duration and license filters.

Let me know if that works,

Cheers,

frederic

--

Frederic Font - ffont.github.io

Music Technology Group, UPF - mtg.upf.edu

Freesound - freesound.org

[Hanna Becker]

Hi Frederic,

You're right, I didn't notice the parantheses are grouped wrongly. Thanks for pointing that out! How strange that it ever worked like this.

It works fine again with the query you proposed.

About your other suggestion, I've tried that before, but can't seem to produce good results with it.

E.g. trying this with the searchTerm "insomnia"...

const response = await freeSound.textSearch(`*${searchTerm}*`, {
page: 1,
filter: `duration:[1.0 TO 15.0] AND (license:"Creative Commons 0")`,

sort: 'rating_desc',
fields: 'id,duration,name,license,previews,type,tags',
});

...I only get one search result, whereas with the other query I get 4 which look like good matches. From the search results, the impression I get is that the query parameter looks for an exact match of the word, rather than also matching for terms where it's included, like "insomniac". (I also tried it like this, btw, with the same result:  freeSound.textSearch(searchTerm, ...)

From the API docs, however, I understand that the query parameter should work as an inclusion filter: "Therefore, searching for query=123 will find you sounds with id 1234, sounds that have 1234 in the description, in the tags, etc." (https://freesound.org/docs/api/resources_apiv2.html#search-resources).

Cheers,

Hanna