Document link given in fililng-history not retrievable

#1

Hi all - we have a slight problem in that some documents in the filing history with a valid looking URL do not work for retrieving the document. For example, if I get the filing history for this company:

curl --location --request GET ‘https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04949951/filing-history?items_per_page=50’

The last item is the INC:
{“category”:“incorporation”,“date”:“2003-10-31”,“description”:“incorporation-company”,“links”:{“self”:"/company/04949951/filing-history/MTUzNzM1NTMzYWRpcXprY3g",“document_metadata”:“https://frontend-doc-api.company-information.service.gov.uk/document/lvO0J86UIMn0W5zp-30TldMJM8g7M9kwwELropFt_js"},“paper_filed”:true,“type”:“NEWINC”,“pages”:0,“barcode”:null,“transaction_id”:"MTUzNzM1NTMzYWRpcXprY3g”}

I can see there is no barcode and 0 pages, and trying to use the metadata link gives a 404:

so have 2 questions:
Is this a temporary thing, was the INC never scanned? This seems to have become more frequent over the last few days, which make be a coincicence?

Would like to understand this example to debug the others we are seeing.

thanks in advance

Pete

#2

When you encounter these it can be worth doing a quick double check on Companies House’s own search site (which also uses the API) to see if the document exists there. In this case it gets an error as well (EL PASO LTD filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK). Which, based on my experience, is more likely something being wrong behind the scenes than a scan of the document not existing. You can report these to Companies House and they can often be fixed, if that assumption is correct.

In my experience this was fairly common when the system launched, but we don’t find many missing documents any more, so my guess would be coincidence (but have no idea if that is actually the case).

1 Like
#3

Hi Ash, thanks - yep, I forgot to mention that. If I use the UI to do the check, the document link 404’s as well.

And I agree - this was fairly common during the release of the REST api but haven’t seen it for some time, just seems to have suddenly become more common.

#4

This is incorrect. That document should be available. I will get it fixed.
Thank you for letting us know.

#5

That document is now available. sorry for the delay.