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Forum Discussion
Search_v2 API Changes
Hi folks, I just wanted to give some feedback regarding the new search_v2 API, which came as a bit of surprise to me. Firstly it seems that the creation of this new API was not announced, at ...
Good news, the team has finished reviewing this and has decided to extend this, bringing the retirement date for /files/search to October 28. Hope this helps!
Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffThanks for sharing this detailed feedback! We appreciate you taking the time to write this up. I'll send this along to the team.
Greg.
Thank you for your reply.
Are you able to provide any further information on other planned changes to the API? I notice that there are other v2 endpoint options in the documentation, but these are also inconsistent - most use the same continue endpoint as the v1 API for example. I also fail to notice any information about whether more changes are planned, whether any further removals are planned, or any roadmap for the API as a whole.
Is there any timeframe for when the relevant team may respond to these concerns?
I will also note that this is not the first API change made to the v2 API which has broken applications.
Not every application which uses Dropbox is a SaaS solution fully under control of the original developer. Self-hosted services using Dropbox are put in a very difficult position with these changes. We cannot simply roll out a fix overnight. Some of our users take months to plan upgrades and can only do so at certain times of year.
Andrew
- Greg-DB
Thanks for following up. I don't have any other news or planned changes to share. Dropbox will announce any other changes if/when they are planned. We don't have a public roadmap for the API, but I'll pass this along as a feature request as well. I can't promise if or when that might be implemented though.
Also, I checked on this change with the team on this, and we did send an email regarding the search endpoint migration, but it sounds like that unfortunately did not make it to you, perhaps either because it got filtered or because you weren't using the endpoint, like you mentioned. In any case, I recommend making sure the email address on the account that owns your API app(s) is valid and can receive emails from Dropbox. And, make sure you haven't disabled the "API announcements" category on https://www.dropbox.com/account/notifications .
In addition to email notifications, you can find news about the API on the blog here: https://dropbox.tech/developers . There's also an RSS feed for that here: https://dropbox.tech/developers/feed . For instance, here's a blog post about the new search functionality.
Anyway, Dropbox is now offering new search functionality, so the team chose to introduce a new version of the search endpoint on API v2 (/2/files/search_v2) to replace the older one on API v2 (/2/files/search). Dropbox generally versions specific endpoints like this when introducing changes to specific functionality, instead of versioning the entire API (e.g., from Dropbox API v2 to a hypothetical Dropbox API v3). I understand this is not your preferred pattern for changes like this so I've raised this with the team, but right now there aren't any plans to change the versioning scheme used on the Dropbox API. I've likewise sent your feedback along regarding the "continue" endpoint format.
Finally, I've also shared this request to reconsider the retirement of /2/files/search, but right now it is still planned to be retired on February 28th, 2021. We'll follow up if that changes. If you are unable to migrate your app to use the new version by then, feel free to open an API ticket to see if we can offer some solution.
Hi Greg,
Thank you for the much more detailed and informative response.
The issue that I, and I'm sure others, face is that we are the developers of software which users typically self-host. As a result we add features for our users to make use of, but we do not necessarily use them ourselves. If we don't use them, then we don't use the endpoint and it seems that we do not get notified. Nor do we have access to their system.
Furthermore, because our users self-host, while we will patch this in time (I'm testing the patch now), our next point release won't be until the 8th March 2021, which is after the retirement date. Because of the nature of our software (Online Learning), many institutions will not actually install the update until their next school break. So while our next point release is the 8th March, many of our users will not be in a position to install it until April at the earliest. Even if were to release a version sooner, many of our users cannot upgrade during their school term time, especially with the critical role of online learning at the present time.
Sadly, because of self-hosted nature of the software, we're unable to request an exemption like you've suggested for others because we do not control their application access.
I will also note that this is not the first instance of this affecting us. We also have an issue whereby when we wrote our integration Dropbox did not require any scopes in the authentication request (in fact your documentation still suggests that this is acceptable and describes the `scope` with type `String?` and requesting all if not specified). However this changed in September and now new API keys require that scopes be specified. There was no warning beyond "but may be turned off soon". Note: the links at the bottom of the blog post are just underlined text.
I do appreciate that you've passed this on to the relevant team. I'm aware that more and more applications are only offered through SaaS or managed offerings, but many projects are not, and this will almost certainly affect the Open Source community more than others.
Regarding versioning, I think that introducing a new API endpoint is not a particular problem, but that retiring endpoints most certainly is. Breaking changes within the lifetime of a major version is generally not well received and has a tendency to cause problems - especially given the short timeframes involved in your recent changes.
I would really urge you to reconsider dropping support for the v2 search v1 API on the 28th February - at least defer it until October 15th when the announcement will have been 12 months old and you will have given non-SaaS solutions and their users a chance to manage this change properly.
Thank you and best wishes,
Andrew
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