Filing-history category filter behaviour nolonger working

API Issues
#1

We have been using the documented category filter when calling the filing-history endpoint for years without issue. Recently there has been a change that has broken it.

$history = $api->send(’/company/12246847/filing-history’, [‘category’=>‘incorporation’]);

This should return incorporation documents but is now returning documents outside of that category. At the moment it seems to be gazette notices with the category of gazette. Why are gazette categories being returned when the filter is incorporation?

As I said - this was working without issue for 2 or 3 years. The last month or two something has broken it.

The included company number above can be used as an example of the error.

#2

Thank you for taking the time to report this. I have just run some tests and agree there is an issue. I will raise this with our release and development teams for investigation.

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#3

There has been a change.
Following a review of the filing history filters (after customer feedback) we recently extended the incorporation filter to include the following transaction categories:
“change-of-constitution”, “change-of-name”, “court-order”, “gazette”, “reregistration”, “resolution”, “restoration” as well as maintaining “incorporation”.

#4

This is absoutely insane. Who is making these decisions? I don’t remember being consulted as a “customer”?

Why on earth would you mess with the working parameters of a live API being used by others like this?
Any logical thinking developers would instead implement a new category if this was a requirement, certainly not mess around with existing working functionality that would break existing implementations. This is just not the done thing with establish API’s.

When I ask for category = incorporation I expect it to give me incorporation. This change just doesn’t make sense in any way shape or form.

“after customer feedback” Really? I don’t believe this.I bet one person asked for it and the change was made completely disregarding the impact on other API users. As I said, I don’t remember being asked for feedback.

Absolutely astonishing decision making. It’s like having a category for blue but it gives you red and green as well.

And where are these changes documented? And where was notice of the changes advertised?

#5

It is of course possible to filter out the unwanted details on our side.

However having the “resolution” category returned with this list is a concern for us - there may be a large number of resolutions. We have a business need to locate and obtain copies of filing documents relating to fundamental changes from the birth of the entity (incorporation, change-of-constitution, change-of-name …) but having to potentially filter out lots of resolutions could impact us.

Is there a suggested way to just pull out e.g. incorporation / change of articles / change of name documents while avoiding returning what could be a lot of data - thus requiring additional requests?

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