Does the Microsoft Search API query or paginate first?

Question

The Microsoft Search API, as described here in this link (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/search-api-overview?view=graph-rest-1.0#page-search-results) seems to paginate first, then apply my query when I'm searching for drive items. I (rightly or wrongly) have found this very counterintuitive. Is this the expected behaviour?

Answer 1

Hi @Lee Campbell

Hope you're doing well.

I've tested this scenario at my end and based on my understanding, this API works as per design. You can use from & size property in request body to control pagination of your Search results.

Here's below sample request, -

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/search/query  
  
{  
  "requests": [  
    {  
      "entityTypes": [  
        "driveItem"  
      ],  
      "query": {  
        "queryString": "docx"  
      },  
      "from": 0,  
      "size": 5  
    }  
  ]  
}  

The above request will list only 5 results (as size=5).

Please note that size is different for different resources. Refer this documentation.

You can modify from & size to change set of results (as per new range).

    {  
      "requests": [  
        {  
          "entityTypes": [  
            "driveItem"  
          ],  
          "query": {  
            "queryString": "docx"  
          },  
          "from": 10,  
          "size": 30  
        }  
      ]  
    }  

The above request will fetch the results in between given range (i.e., 10 - 30).

You can always check moreResultsAvailable property in response. If moreResultsAvailable is true, then there are more results that you can query.

Hope this helps.

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