The $filter=contains feature isn’t supported

Question

Hi,

I’m trying to filter OneDrive DriveItems by name using $filter=contains, with the following query:
https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/drive/root/children?$filter=contains(name,'exa').
The request consistently returns Not Found - 404.

Does this indicate that string functions such as contains are not supported on the drive/root/children endpoint?

If so, is this a known limitation by design, and is there a recommended alternative for performing name-based partial matching (beyond search(q=...)?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Afaik contains is not supported, but you can use startsWith() where appropriate:

https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/drive/root/children?$filter=startsWith(name,'Book')

404 error can also be returned when you have insufficient permissions, so check for that. And yeah, I know it's inconsistent, but the Graph API is a bit of a mess...

Answer 2

$filter=contains(...) is not supported on OneDrive drive/root/children.

OneDrive and Microsoft Graph have different levels of OData $filter support:

• The OneDrive-specific filtering guidance shows that only comparison and logical operators (eq, ne, gt, ge, lt, le, and, or, parentheses) are supported; string functions like contains, startswith, and endswith are not listed as supported for OneDrive collections.
• The Microsoft Graph $filter documentation does list contains, startswith, and endswith as generally supported functions, but support is resource-specific. For DriveItems under drive/root/children, contains is not supported, which is why the request fails.

This is a by-design limitation for that endpoint.

For partial name matching on DriveItems, the recommended alternative is to use the search API rather than $filter:

• Use the search function on the drive:
  • GET /me/drive/root/search(q='{search-text}')
• q is matched across several fields including filename, metadata, and file content, which covers name-based partial matching.
• This method supports $expand, $select, $skipToken, $top, and $orderby to shape the results, but not $filter on contains(name, ...).

So for partial name queries, the supported approach is .../drive/root/search(q='exa') rather than $filter=contains(name,'exa') on drive/root/children.

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References:

• Use the $filter query parameter
• Filtering a collection
• Search for DriveItems within a drive
• Search for a DriveItems within a drive