Pagination results (value for total) on artist search a little peculiar

[dnblankedelman]

Let me demonstrate using curl:

First, with an offset of 0:
$ curl -s -X GET "https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?q=chloe&type=artist&limit=10&offset=0" -H "Accept: application/json"|jq '.artists|[.total]'

[
  341
]

Then with an offset of 10:
$ curl -s -X GET "https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?q=chloe&type=artist&limit=10&offset=10" -H "Accept: application/json"|jq '.artists|[.total]'

[
  328
]

Now let's try 20:
$ curl -s -X GET "https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?q=chloe&type=artist&limit=10&offset=20" -H "Accept: application/json"|jq '.artists|[.total]'

[
  331
]

And just for fun, an offset of 330:
`$ curl -s -X GET "https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?q=chloe&type=artist&limit=10&offset=330" -H "Accept: application/json"|jq '.artists|[.total]'``

[
  331
]

So I'm having a hard time understanding the behavior. Is this a bug, or do I not quite get how this value is supposed to work? Thanks!

[cosinekitty]

I'm glad someone already reported this. I found the same issue with searching for tracks. Here is an example:

https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=Yael+Naim&offset=0&limit=10&type=track&market=US&locale=en-US
This yields tracks.total = 78.

https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=Yael+Naim&offset=10&limit=10&type=track&market=US&locale=en-US
Now tracks.total = 71.

https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=Yael+Naim&offset=20&limit=10&type=track&market=US&locale=en-US
tracks.total = 74.

https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=Yael+Naim&offset=30&limit=10&type=track&market=US&locale=en-US
tracks.total = 73.

The following three pages of 10 tracks each yield the same value, tracks.total = 74.
What's really bad is that the last page (offset=70), has tracks.total=0 and does not return any tracks (it should have provided the last 4 tracks).

If I modify the URL in tracks.next to this value, I can get the final 4 items:
https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=Yael+Naim&offset=70&limit=4&type=track&market=US&locale=en-US

This bug will prevent any client that trusts the tracks.next URL from being able to find all the search results!

[restfulmt]

Hi,

I found the same problem searching for albums. It can be reproduced as follows:

1. Make the following request:
   https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=redhouse&offset=0&limit=20&type=album

   The response returns albums.total=27 and 20 items.

2. Make another request using the albums.next URI:
   https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=redhouse&offset=20&limit=20&type=album

   The response returns albums.total=21 and 1 item. (6 missing items!)

3. Make the same request with offset=0 and limit=30
   https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=redhouse&offset=0&limit=30&type=album

   The response returns albums.total=27 and 27 items, which is correct.

[restfulmt]

Hi again,

This seems a serious bug. Suppose the following request:

https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=redhouse&offset=0&limit=50&type=album

Iterating over results using limit=50 I get albums.total=140 and 90 actual items.

Iterating over results with limit=20 in the first call and then 50 in the successive requests I get albums.total=156 and 76 actual items.

Is there any reliable way to iterate over the search results?

[asmitter]

Thanks for the detailed reports. We've now rolled out a fix so the count and paging should be stable.
Let us know if you see any other unusual behaviour.