[Bug]: REST API for summary statistics "/materials/summary/stats/" is code 500

[chibisi]

Code snippet

curl -X 'GET' \
  'https://api.materialsproject.org/materials/summary/stats/?field=band_gap&num_points=100' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'X-API-KEY: MyAPIKey'

What happened?

It is likely that the "/materials/summary/stats/" REST API on https://api.materialsproject.org/docs#/Materials%20Summary/search_materials_summary_stats__get is broken. I have tried using the UI to generate curl requests, for example:

curl -X 'GET' \
  'https://api.materialsproject.org/materials/summary/stats/?field=band_gap&num_points=100' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'X-API-KEY: MyAPIKey'

and get a status 500 Internal Server Error and response header

 access-control-expose-headers: X-Api-Key 
 alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400 
 cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC 
 cf-ray: 99d74f5f9ed79142-FRA 
 content-length: 21 
 content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 
 date: Wed,12 Nov 2025 16:12:17 GMT 
 priority: u=1,i 
 ratelimit-limit: 25 
 ratelimit-remaining: 24 
 ratelimit-reset: 1 
 server: cloudflare 
 server-timing: cfExtPri 
 vary: Origin 
 via: kong/2.8.4 
 x-kong-proxy-latency: 7 
 x-kong-upstream-latency: 572 
 x-ratelimit-limit-day: 640000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-hour: 40000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-minute: 1000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-month: 12800000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-second: 25 
 x-ratelimit-limit-year: 100000000 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-day: 639992 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-hour: 39998 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-minute: 998 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-month: 12799992 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-second: 24 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-year: 99999992 

Or a more complete query:

curl -X 'GET' \
  'https://api.materialsproject.org/materials/summary/stats/?field=band_gap&min_val=0&max_val=10&num_points=100' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'X-API-KEY: MyAPIKey'

Gets code 500 also

 access-control-expose-headers: X-Api-Key 
 alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400 
 cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC 
 cf-ray: 99d80e638df29e0a-LHR 
 content-length: 21 
 content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 
 date: Wed,12 Nov 2025 18:22:43 GMT 
 priority: u=1,i 
 ratelimit-limit: 25 
 ratelimit-remaining: 24 
 ratelimit-reset: 1 
 server: cloudflare 
 server-timing: cfExtPri 
 vary: Origin 
 via: kong/2.8.4 
 x-kong-proxy-latency: 5 
 x-kong-upstream-latency: 1942 
 x-ratelimit-limit-day: 640000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-hour: 40000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-minute: 1000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-month: 12800000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-second: 25 
 x-ratelimit-limit-year: 100000000 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-day: 639988 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-hour: 39996 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-minute: 999 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-month: 12799988 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-second: 24 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-year: 99999988 

Adding num_samples value to the query also results in the same failure. So I think this portion of the REST API is broken. I have been able to use other parts of the API.

I have used the latest version tag on your API page, since I am running curl rather than over the Python API I don't know what version your server is running for the REST API. I hope that I am reporting this to the correct place since there is an issue tracker for the website (https://github.com/materialsproject/www-issues) but no one has updated it for 11 years and I don't know if anyone will pick this up if I raise an issue there.

Thank you

Version

v0.45.13

Which OS?

• MacOS
• Windows
• Linux

Log output

access-control-expose-headers: X-Api-Key 
 alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400 
 cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC 
 cf-ray: 99d74f5f9ed79142-FRA 
 content-length: 21 
 content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 
 date: Wed,12 Nov 2025 16:12:17 GMT 
 priority: u=1,i 
 ratelimit-limit: 25 
 ratelimit-remaining: 24 
 ratelimit-reset: 1 
 server: cloudflare 
 server-timing: cfExtPri 
 vary: Origin 
 via: kong/2.8.4 
 x-kong-proxy-latency: 7 
 x-kong-upstream-latency: 572 
 x-ratelimit-limit-day: 640000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-hour: 40000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-minute: 1000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-month: 12800000 
 x-ratelimit-limit-second: 25 
 x-ratelimit-limit-year: 100000000 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-day: 639992 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-hour: 39998 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-minute: 998 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-month: 12799992 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-second: 24 
 x-ratelimit-remaining-year: 99999992

[tschaume]

Thanks @chibisi for reporting this. I don't think we've ever officially supported that endpoint and should probably remove it. Are there any stats you're missing by interacting with the /materials/summary endpoint through mpr.materials.summary.search/count()?

[chibisi]

There isn't anything I'm missing at the moment, I was going through the REST API and noticed that there was no output from the summary statistics end point and decided to report it. If I need any summary statistics, they can be calculated from information from other endpoints.