Getting 404s

[Edward Banner]

Hello 👋

I am trying to get a random 5 letter word. I was running into the same issue mentioned here with not real words so I added minCorpusCount=10000 and minDictionaryCount=20 as suggested there.

Now I'm getting some real words, but only in like every 1 out of 10 calls. The other 9 calls I'm getting a {'statusCode': 404, 'error': 'Not Found', 'message': 'Not Found'} response.

Any suggestions for how I could modify my query to get real words and avoid the 404s?

This is my current query for context:

minLength=5&maxLength=5&minCorpusCount=10000&minDictionaryCount=20

[Erin McKean]

Hi Edward!

Thanks for using the Wordnik API! We recently made some tweaks to the random word endpoint to reduce the number of less-wordlike words being returned, so now the minDictionaryCount=20 parameter is probably too high, which is resulting in more 404s. I would tweak the minCorpusCount and minDictionaryCount downward until you start seeing more hits.

We're working on an update that should improve our sampling process; if you want access to the beta when it's released you can sign up for our beta API testers list here: http://eepurl.com/bPCg0D.

I hope this helps!

Erin

---------------------
Erin McKean
Wordnik
@emc...@xoxo.zone/@wor...@wordnik.social
Wordnik is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
The Wordnik mission: every English word, available to everyone, everywhere

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[Edward Banner]

Thanks, I'll try it out!

I'm not sure I understand the 404s though... is it basically a bug? My expectation is the endpoint should never 404, as long as there is at least one word which matches the criteria.

[Erin McKean]

Yep, your understanding is not wrong! Unfortunately, the datastore we're using for this is just not really optimized for random sampling over a dataset as large as ours, which is why we're working to update this API. We had to make a tradeoff between making the call more performant (faster responses and cheaper for us to run) vs. making it have better recall for filtered queries. :(

We do have a working prototype of the new endpoint but we have to do a bit more stress-testing before the beta release, as it's one of our most-used endpoints.

Thanks again!

Erin

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