having trouble with searching using filter!

[meisnate12]

I'm trying to use LibrarySection.search to search using ! in the search filter and when I add the ! after actor, country, director, genre, and writer no matter what value I give it, it just returns every movie in my library. studio! and year! seemed to work but i haven't tested any other filters other then the ones mentioned in this post. what i ran to test is belowis below

def test(filters):
    print(str(filters) + ": " + str(len(plex.Library.search(**filters))))

test({'actor': 'Will Smith'})
test({'actor!': 'Will Smith'})
test({'country': 'USA'})
test({'country!': 'USA'})
test({'director': 'Steven Spielberg'})
test({'director!': 'Steven Spielberg'})
test({'genre': 'Romance'})
test({'genre!': 'Romance'})
test({'genre': 'Comedy'})
test({'genre!': 'Comedy'})
test({'studio': 'Pixar'})
test({'studio!': 'Pixar'})
test({'year': '1990'})
test({'year!': '1990'})
test({'writer': 'Quentin Tarantino'})
test({'writer!': 'Quentin Tarantino'})

Output

{'actor': 'Will Smith'}: 21
{'actor!': 'Will Smith'}: 1780
{'country': 'USA'}: 1489
{'country!': 'USA'}: 1780
{'director': 'Steven Spielberg'}: 16
{'director!': 'Steven Spielberg'}: 1780
{'genre': 'Romance'}: 107
{'genre!': 'Romance'}: 1780
{'genre': 'Comedy'}: 603
{'genre!': 'Comedy'}: 1780
{'studio': 'Pixar'}: 9
{'studio!': 'Pixar'}: 1771
{'year': '1990'}: 15
{'year!': '1990'}: 1765
{'writer': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 12
{'writer!': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 1780

Am i doing something wrong or is this feature not working correctly?

[blacktwin]

What did you expect to see by appending ! to the search key?

[meisnate12]

I expect to see the inverse search i.e.

{'studio': 'Pixar'}: 9          # 9 movies with Pixar
{'studio!': 'Pixar'}: 1771      # 1771/1780 movies without Pixar

this is what i expect to see whereas with most of the filters it just returns all movies instead of the inverse i.e.

{'writer': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 12      # 12 movies with Quentin Tarantino as the writer
{'writer!': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 1780   # 1780 movies which is my entire library including the 
                                         # 12 with Quentin Tarantino as the writer

In LibrarySection.search is says "**kwargs (dict) – Any of the available filters for the current library section. Partial string matches allowed. Multiple matches OR together. Negative filtering also possible, just add an exclamation mark to the end of filter name, e.g. resolution!=1x1."

[blacktwin]

print(len(plex.library.section('Movies').all()))
print(len(plex.library.section('Movies').search(**{'studio': 'Pixar'})))
print(len(plex.library.section('Movies').search(**{'studio!': 'Pixar'})))
1163
10
1153

PlexAPI version 4.1.2

[meisnate12]

yes studio and year work correctly but all the other i tested do not

[meisnate12]

try it with an actor, country, writer, director, or genre

[meisnate12]

also i just tried network and network! for tv libraries and neither filter worked they both just returned my entire library no matter what i set their values too

[blacktwin]

network is not a valid filter. You would still use studio for show libraries. Can you please provide your plexapi version? I've confirmed your findings.

Can you edit this area, to this:

    def _cleanSearchFilter(self, category, value, libtype=None):
        # check a few things before we begin
        categories = [x.key for x in self.filterFields()]
        booleanFilters = [x.key for x in self.filterFields() if x.type == 'boolean']
        if category.endswith('!'):
            if category[:-1] not in categories:
                raise BadRequest('Unknown filter category: %s' % category[:-1])
            category = category[:-1] # <--- add this line
        elif category not in categories:
            raise BadRequest('Unknown filter category: %s' % category)
        if category in booleanFilters:
            return '1' if value else '0'
        if not isinstance(value, (list, tuple)):
            value = [value]

Then run your tests again. Let me know.

[meisnate12]

when i use studio on show libraries i get

plexapi.exceptions.BadRequest: Unknown filter category: studio

but not when i use network also on the LibrarySection.search it does say that network is a valid tv filter and studio is not for tv. In fact, it says studio is for music even though I've confirmed it works for movies

ill try and update the code and get back to you shortly

[meisnate12]

my api version is 4.1.2 and I'm not sure how to test your change i edited the library.py file that was in pythons library but I don't think the change was actually being used since non of my prints were working either

[blacktwin]

With edit:

print(len(plex.library.section('Movies').all()))
def test(filters):
    print(str(filters) + ": " + str(len(plex.library.section('Movies').search(**filters))))

test({'actor': 'Will Smith'})
test({'actor!': 'Will Smith'})
test({'country': 'USA'})
test({'country!': 'USA'})
test({'director': 'Steven Spielberg'})
test({'director!': 'Steven Spielberg'})
test({'genre': 'Romance'})
test({'genre!': 'Romance'})
test({'genre': 'Comedy'})
test({'genre!': 'Comedy'})
test({'studio': 'Pixar'})
test({'studio!': 'Pixar'})
test({'year': '1990'})
test({'year!': '1990'})
test({'writer': 'Quentin Tarantino'})
test({'writer!': 'Quentin Tarantino'})

Output

1163
{'actor': 'Will Smith'}: 7
{'actor!': 'Will Smith'}: 1156
{'country': 'USA'}: 869
{'country!': 'USA'}: 294
{'director': 'Steven Spielberg'}: 12
{'director!': 'Steven Spielberg'}: 1151
{'genre': 'Romance'}: 113
{'genre!': 'Romance'}: 1050
{'genre': 'Comedy'}: 414
{'genre!': 'Comedy'}: 749
{'studio': 'Pixar'}: 10
{'studio!': 'Pixar'}: 1153
{'year': '1990'}: 30
{'year!': '1990'}: 1133
{'writer': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 7
{'writer!': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 1156

Without edit:

1163
{'actor': 'Will Smith'}: 7
{'actor!': 'Will Smith'}: 1163
{'country': 'USA'}: 869
{'country!': 'USA'}: 1163
{'director': 'Steven Spielberg'}: 12
{'director!': 'Steven Spielberg'}: 1163
{'genre': 'Romance'}: 113
{'genre!': 'Romance'}: 1163
{'genre': 'Comedy'}: 414
{'genre!': 'Comedy'}: 1163
{'studio': 'Pixar'}: 10
{'studio!': 'Pixar'}: 1153
{'year': '1990'}: 30
{'year!': '1990'}: 1133
{'writer': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 7
{'writer!': 'Quentin Tarantino'}: 1163

[meisnate12]

That's awesome looks like it's working! did you get a chance to look at network/studio search for tv libraries it was broke not only inversely but the normal one as far as I can tell.
Both network and network! We're returning all shows in the library no matter what value was input

[blacktwin]

Network should not be a valid filter. You can see for yourself when filtering in the webUI. Pull out your browser Inspect tool and look at the network tab for the API call.

There was a somewhat recent change to this project. The filters are no longer hard coded and instead pull from Plex. If network is not throwing an error the I'd assume you aren't using then latest updates from this project.

Also, check out #402

[meisnate12]

I'm using 4.1.2 to be honest I'm not sure how to use your git version over what I installed with pip install I'm very new to python even if I'm not new to programming but it looks like you fixed the network problem before I even brought it up. I have to wait till the next release that I can pull with pip install but I'm glad these issues seemed to have been fixed. Do you have an idea of when the next release would be or is there any place i can check to see whne the next one is coming?

[blacktwin]

You can try one of these.
pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall plexapi reinstall all packages even if they are already up-to-date
pip install -I plexapi Ignore the installed packages (reinstalling instead)
pip install git+https://github.com/pkkid/python-plexapi.git pull from github