Peculiar ordering - company search

[george]

Hi -

When querying https://api.companieshouse.gov.uk/search it returns a list of results. These appear to be nicely sorted by how close the company name is to my search parameter. Let’s call these results search_results.

When using the items_per_page parameter and setting it to 1, I would expect to get back the same result as index zero of search_results. However it’s a different company.

Why is this the case? What’s the logic behind the ordering of companies?

Best,
George

[voracityemail]

Short: don’t set items_per_page=1 without also specifying start_index (e.g. start_index=0)

Long-standing bug - see my notes at:

Search - no items returned when searching company number for items_per_page=1

The code here must have changed as the behaviour's changed but it's still not quite right! If you call the search end-point and specify items_per_page as 1 and don't specify a start_index, the second result in the list is returned. This seems to happen because start_index is incorrectly being set to 1 when you specify items_per_page as 1. For other values of items_per_page (or if you don't specify it at all) start_index is set to zero (which is where it should start). Example (the "normal"…

…it looks like someone changed the behaviour here because even further back you would get no results at all if you did this (although the fields would suggest there were).

I just tried this and indeed this issue is still occurring as described:
All as expected for e.g. items_per_page=2 (and up)

curl -uMY_API_KEY_: "https://api.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=kirklands&items_per_page=2"

{
    "start_index": 0,
    "total_results": 31,
    "kind": "search#all",
    "items_per_page": 2,
    "page_number": 1,
    "items": [
        {
            "description": "00620610 - Incorporated on  9 February 1959",
            "kind": "searchresults#company",
            "company_number": "00620610",
            "title": "KIRKLANDS LIMITED"
            ...
        },
        {
            "title": "KIRKLANDS BUSINESS SOLUTIONS LIMITED",
            "company_number": "SC229764",
            "kind": "searchresults#company",
            "description": "SC229764 - Incorporated on 28 March 2002"
            ...
        }
    ]
}

Different first (and only) item for items_per_page=1. Note the change in start_index - now 1 (but 0 above).

curl -uMY_API_KEY: "https://api.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=kirklands&items_per_page=1"

{
    "page_number": 2,
    "kind": "search#all",
    "total_results": 31,
    "items_per_page": 1,
    "start_index": 1,
    "items": [
        {
            "title": "KIRKLANDS BUSINESS SOLUTIONS LIMITED",
            "company_number": "SC229764",
            "company_status": "active",
            "kind": "searchresults#company",
            ...
        }
    ]
}

[george]

Good spot.

I ended up setting items_per_page to 2 and just taking the item at index zero to circumnavigate this for now.