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    <title>topic Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive in Dropbox API Support &amp; Feedback</title>
    <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/239176#M13278</link>
    <description>This should be fixed now. Please let us know if you're still seeing any issues.</description>
    <pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2017 22:59:28 GMT</pubDate>
    <dc:creator>Greg-DB</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2017-08-29T22:59:28Z</dc:date>
    <item>
      <title>files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238601#M13210</link>
      <description>&lt;P&gt;My application uses files/search (with mode=filename) to find specific marker files with our dropbox structure in order to identify the correct folder to work with.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;These marker files have unique names eg ".a00000XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.sfdb".&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;(Those are Dropbox for Salesforce folder markers).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Yesterday and for the past 6 months or more, files/search&amp;nbsp;would return&amp;nbsp;only exact matches. &amp;nbsp;In most cases 1 match.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Today files/search seems to be applying some sort of "fuzzy" search and matches more or less anything that looks a bit like what I asked for resulting in responses containing 100&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;matches.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This is causing problems with my application&amp;nbsp;as now I need&amp;nbsp;to parse all the responses and discard all but an exact match. &amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Is this an official change to the files/search behaviour?&lt;BR /&gt;Is there a way to specifiy exact match only?&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Regards&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Matt Casey&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 29 May 2019 09:19:43 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238601#M13210</guid>
      <dc:creator>Digitalhappy</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2019-05-29T09:19:43Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238629#M13217</link>
      <description>&lt;P&gt;Hi Matt, thanks for the report. There isn't a way to force exact matches, but I don't believe there was supposed to be a change to introduce fuzzy matching anyway.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Can you share a sample set of request parameters and the results you're getting back so we can make sure we understand exactly what you're seeing and look into this for you?&amp;nbsp;Thanks in advance!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 25 Aug 2017 14:27:09 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238629#M13217</guid>
      <dc:creator>Greg-DB</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-08-25T14:27:09Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238640#M13220</link>
      <description>&lt;P&gt;Hi Greg,&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I have raised this as ticket with the business support team and provided logs showing the difference in response from files/search from yesterday and today.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I know there isn't an&amp;nbsp;explicit way to force an exact match but prior to today the matches returned from files/search only ever returned a single match when you searched for a filename that existed somewhere in Dropbox.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;My use case is to identify folders created by the Dropbox for Salesforce integration. It creates an ".{{SFID}}.sfdb" file in each related folder, where {{SFID}} is the salesforce ID of the related object.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;My search params were very simple;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;{&lt;BR /&gt;&amp;nbsp; "path":"",&lt;BR /&gt;&amp;nbsp; "query":"\\.{{SFID}}.sfdb",&lt;BR /&gt;&amp;nbsp; "mode":"filename"&lt;BR /&gt;}&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This gave a simple method to identify folders based on the&amp;nbsp;existence of special marker files.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;BR /&gt;Today the search is returning "similar" matches and in many cases the similar matches are quite different from what you searched for.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This would be ok if you could be sure that the exact match was ranked the highest in the search results but&amp;nbsp;unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;In many cases the similar - but often quite different - matches appear higher up in the response set.&amp;nbsp; In some cases the similar&amp;nbsp;responses are so numerous that the exact match doesn't appear in the first 100 matches and requires further requests to find the match.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I'm currently trying searches using different search query strings to see if I can reliable return the exact match first.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 25 Aug 2017 15:17:18 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238640#M13220</guid>
      <dc:creator>Digitalhappy</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-08-25T15:17:18Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238672#M13223</link>
      <description>Thanks! We'll check the logs in your ticket and look into this.</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:48:55 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238672#M13223</guid>
      <dc:creator>Greg-DB</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-08-25T16:48:55Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238912#M13233</link>
      <description>I don't have an update on this yet, but this is currently open with engineering. I'll follow up here once I have some news for you.</description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 28 Aug 2017 14:04:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/238912#M13233</guid>
      <dc:creator>Greg-DB</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-08-28T14:04:00Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/239176#M13278</link>
      <description>This should be fixed now. Please let us know if you're still seeing any issues.</description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 29 Aug 2017 22:59:28 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/239176#M13278</guid>
      <dc:creator>Greg-DB</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-08-29T22:59:28Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/241644#M13458</link>
      <description>&lt;P&gt;I think I have fallen foul of this as well. I'm pretty sure up until recently (presumably 3 weeks ago) searching for the filename "ABC.pdf" only returned an exact match. But now it's also matching "ABC blah blah.pdf" which I don't want.&lt;/P&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 15 Sep 2017 04:06:44 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/241644#M13458</guid>
      <dc:creator>dev1</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-09-15T04:06:44Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/241657#M13461</link>
      <description>&lt;P&gt;I contacted support directly using my business account contact, they confirmed that some users were experiencing the same issue and escalated the issue to their API team.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;After a week or so the issue was resolved and now the search behaviour is back to how it used to be for me. I have no idea what they did.&lt;BR /&gt;&lt;BR /&gt;Not knowing if the issue would be resolved, I re-wrote my code to expect multiple results and also changed the search query I was using to find the files.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;My particular use-case is searching for marker files to identify individual folders.&amp;nbsp; The markers are all very similar - 15 alphanumeric chars - and all end in the same extension ".sfdb" and there are around 20K of them in our Dropbox.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The new search was returning pretty much any .sfdb file and in most cases the exact match wasn't in the first or even second result set.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The thing I found to give the most consistant results was to not include the file extension in the search query.&amp;nbsp; ie. search for "abcd00000001234" not "abcd00000001234.sfdb".&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Removing the extension meant I received just a handful of results with the exact match consistantly being in the first 3 results.&amp;nbsp; So I used that technique with a small limit on the result set (5 or 10) and then parsed the results to find the exact match.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;That worked well for me with my particular search requirements. The same might not be true for you.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 15 Sep 2017 08:47:30 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/241657#M13461</guid>
      <dc:creator>Digitalhappy</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-09-15T08:47:30Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Re: files/search results seem to be too inclusive</title>
      <link>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/241705#M13466</link>
      <description>&lt;P&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/485970"&gt;@dev1&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;If you're still seeing unexpected entries like that, please &lt;A href="https://www.dropbox.com/developers/contact" target="_self"&gt;open an API ticket&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;with the details so we can investigate.&amp;nbsp;Thanks!&lt;/P&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 15 Sep 2017 14:53:35 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-API-Support-Feedback/files-search-results-seem-to-be-too-inclusive/m-p/241705#M13466</guid>
      <dc:creator>Greg-DB</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2017-09-15T14:53:35Z</dc:date>
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