Search API

The Search API is used to perform searches through the most relevant 4me records for the API’s user. It searches for:

Perform a search query:

GET /search?q=conference

The search query can be provided using the q parameter.

Response

Status: 200 OK
[
  {
    "id": 18,
    "type": "service",
    "title": "Conference Room",
    "details": "The Conference Room service provides telephone conferencing and projection capabilities in the meeting rooms of the Widget Data Center organization.",
    "url": "https://api.itrp-demo.com/v1/services/18",
    "avatar_url": "https://itrp-demo-defaults.s3-accelerate.dualstack.amazonaws.com/avatars/services/original/presentation1.svg"
  },
  {
    "id": 4,
    "type": "request-template",
    "title": "Extension of service hours for the Conference Room service",
    "details": "Determine the period during which the selected service needs to be available and supported, even though these hours are not covered by the current SLA.\nSpecify the period between which the service needs to be available and supported using the Start and End…",
    "url": "https://api.itrp-demo.com/v1/request_templates/4"
  }
]

The response contains a collection of results. Each result contains these fields. Filtering and pagination are available to reduce/limit the collection of sites.

Fields

id
Readonly integer — The unique ID of the result.
type:
Readonly string — The type of the result. Valid values are:
  • ci
  • knowledge-article
  • project-task
  • request
  • request-template
  • service
  • service-instance
  • task
title
Readonly string — The subject or name of the result.
details
Optional string — The extra details about the result, different for each type:
  • knowledge-article: the description or (if empty) instructions
  • request: the last note
  • service: the description
url
Readonly string — The URL to the details of the result.
avatar_url
Optional string — The URL to the uploaded avatar.

Sorting

The results are always sorted by relevance.

Filtering

The scope of a search request can be reduced by passing one or more filter conditions:

$ curl https://api.4me.com/v1/search?q=unix&types=req,request-template

The following operators can be used in filter conditions:

types
If specified, limits the results to those record types. Possible values:
  • ci
  • knowledge-article
  • project-task
  • request
  • request-template
  • service
  • service-instance
  • task

?types=req,task or ?types=request-template

on_behalf_of
When this filter condition is specified, the Search API performs the search on behalf of the person whose ID or primary email address is specified. The results of a search on behalf of someone else are restricted to the services, request templates and knowledge articles for which this other person is covered by an active SLA.

In case two or more person records with the same primary email address exist in different 4me accounts, specify the ID rather than the primary email address to uniquely identify the person record.

Pagination

Search API requests are always paginated. The default page size of 25 records can be adjusted by setting the ?per_page= parameter. The maximum number of records per page is 100.

If the result of a search query contains more records than the ?per_page= parameter, the response will contain the X-Pagination-Next-Page header. This header contains a unique token that can be used as the ?page= parameter to retrieve the next page.

For example, the following cURL command searches for ‘windows’ using a page size of 2:

$ curl https://api.4me.com/v1/search?per_page=2&q=windows
...
< X-Pagination-Next-Page: 9c6921aced7dfb66db958b4d9e2cd4ee
< X-Pagination-Per-Page: 2
< Link: <https://api.4me.com/search?per_page=2&q=windows&page=9c6921aced7dfb66db958b4d9e2cd4ee>; rel="next"
...
[
  {
    "title": "Windows password reset required",
    "details": "",
    "id": 114,
    "type": "request-template",
    "url": "https://api.4me.com/v1/request_templates/114"
  },
  {
    "title": "How to customize the Windows 10 Start menu",
    "details": "The Start menu is back in Windows 10 by popular demand. You are likely to spend quite a bit of time with the Start menu. Whether you are using it in the more traditional Windows way, or using Cortana to search for content on your PC or the web, it is impor…",
    "id": 10,
    "type": "knowledge-article",
    "url": "https://api.4me.com/v1/knowledge_articles/10"
  }
]

The X-Pagination-Next-Page token can be used to retrieve the next page as follows:

$ curl https://api.4me.com/v1/search?page=9c6921aced7dfb66db958b4d9e2cd4ee&per_page=2&q=windows
...

The X-Pagination-Per-Page token remains valid for 30 minutes.

The relevance score of a search result, which is used for sorting, is somewhat non-deterministic. In some cases, a search result that has already been listed on a previous page may re-occur on a later page.
If it is important for your application that search results are unique, we recommend you to keep track of search results that have already been listed and filter out duplicates.