Pagination for Sharepoint search through Micosoft Graph has strange behavior

Question

Hi,

I have this application that lists files from Sharepoint for the current user based on a query string together with pagination, aggregationfilters and sorting.

For the pagination I use the recommended (and only available) method for the search/query endpoint: "from" and "size". I have 10 results per page. When i navigate/paginate though the result it usually works fine and I get the expected result, but on certain pages i get less hits (8 or 9) and sometimes the hits[] array is completely non-existing but the "total"-property shows there are hits in the result.

Endpoint: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/search/query

This is the initial request giving correct number of hits:

{
    "requests": [
      {
        "entityTypes": ["driveItem"],
        "query": {
          "queryString": "dokument AND isDocument=true AND path:\"https://sharepointURL\""
        },
        "aggregations": [
          {
            "field": "fileType",
            "size": 20,
            "bucketDefinition": {
              "sortBy": "count",
              "isDescending": "true",
              "minimumCount": 0
            }
          },
          {
            "field": "lastModifiedTime",
            "size": 2,
            "bucketDefinition": {
              "sortBy": "KeyAsString",
              "isDescending": "false",
              "minimumCount": 0,
              "ranges": [
                { "to": "2023-06-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2023-06-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2024-05-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2024-06-06T22:00:00.000Z" }
              ]
            }
          }
        ],
        "from": 0,
        "size": 10,
        "fields": [
          "id",
          "name",
          "summary",
          "parentReference",
          "fileType",
          "lastModifiedDateTime",
          "lastModifiedBy",
          "webUrl",
          "size"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }

The response:

{
  "value": [
    {
      "searchTerms": ["dokument"],
      "hitsContainers": [
        {
          "hits": [
            ...hits
          ],
          "total": 648,
          "moreResultsAvailable": true,
          "aggregations": [
            {
              "field": "fileType",
              "buckets": [
                ...buckets
              ]
            },
            {
              "field": "lastModifiedTime",
              "buckets": [
                ...buckets
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#Collection(microsoft.graph.searchResponse)"
}

The request giving only 9 hits:

{
    "requests": [
      {
        "entityTypes": ["driveItem"],
        "query": {
          "queryString": "dokument AND isDocument=true AND path:\"https://sharepointURL\""
        },
        "aggregations": [
          {
            "field": "fileType",
            "size": 20,
            "bucketDefinition": {
              "sortBy": "count",
              "isDescending": "true",
              "minimumCount": 0
            }
          },
          {
            "field": "lastModifiedTime",
            "size": 2,
            "bucketDefinition": {
              "sortBy": "KeyAsString",
              "isDescending": "false",
              "minimumCount": 0,
              "ranges": [
                { "to": "2023-06-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2023-06-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2024-05-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2024-06-06T22:00:00.000Z" }
              ]
            }
          }
        ],
        "from": 20,
        "size": 10,
        "fields": [
          "id",
          "name",
          "summary",
          "parentReference",
          "fileType",
          "lastModifiedDateTime",
          "lastModifiedBy",
          "webUrl",
          "size"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }

The request where "hits" gets undefined in the response:

{
    "requests": [
      {
        "entityTypes": ["driveItem"],
        "query": {
          "queryString": "dokument AND isDocument=true AND path:\"https://sharepointURL.com\""
        },
        "aggregations": [
          {
            "field": "fileType",
            "size": 20,
            "bucketDefinition": {
              "sortBy": "count",
              "isDescending": "true",
              "minimumCount": 0
            }
          },
          {
            "field": "lastModifiedTime",
            "size": 2,
            "bucketDefinition": {
              "sortBy": "KeyAsString",
              "isDescending": "false",
              "minimumCount": 0,
              "ranges": [
                { "to": "2023-06-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2023-06-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2024-05-13T22:00:00.000Z" },
                { "from": "2024-06-06T22:00:00.000Z" }
              ]
            }
          }
        ],
        "from": 110,
        "size": 10,
        "fields": [
          "id",
          "name",
          "summary",
          "parentReference",
          "fileType",
          "lastModifiedDateTime",
          "lastModifiedBy",
          "webUrl",
          "size"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }

The response:
"hits" is non-existing but the total tells us there should be hits

{
  "value": [
    {
      "searchTerms": ["dokument"],
      "hitsContainers": [
        {
          "total": 642,
          "moreResultsAvailable": true,
          "aggregations": [
            {
              "field": "fileType",
              "buckets": [
                ...buckets
              ]
            },
            {
              "field": "lastModifiedTime",
              "buckets": [
                ...buckets
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "@odata.context": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#Collection(microsoft.graph.searchResponse)"
}

Answer 1

Hi @Ossian Sandberg,

There is some issue in sharepoint backend, Users' SharePoint Online content search results may be missing. You could refer to the report in Service health

https://admin.microsoft.com/adminportal/home?#/servicehealth/:/alerts/SP709902

The repair job to ensure content search results populate as expected is around 40 percent to completion. We estimate that this process should take approximately two weeks to complete and fully resolve this issue for all affected users.

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