total_count in code search accessed via API different than web results

[sdruskat]

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Hello,

I'm using code search to get the total count of CITATION.cff files across GitHub (or a best effort estimate thereof).

In the past, I've had sensible values for total_count in the API response to authorized search https://api.github.com/search/code?q=filename:CITATION.cff. NOw that the filename qualifier doesn't seem to exist anymore, I still get sensible results in web search with query path:CITATION.cff, returning ~12.5k of CFF files in the root of repositories globally. However, the same query against the API always returns ~1000 as value for total_count, leading me to believe that instead of the total count of the global search result, this gives me the total count of results up to the 1k results limit.

Is this true, or is it a bug, or something that has changed in the API?
(I have a feeling that blank queries with just a qualifier are being discouraged.)
Any other way I can get the real result again?

Thanks!

[orvn]

1000 is the limit from the API when not paginating through it. At the top of the object, do you see a page key at all?

You can either loop through the pages and do your count that way, until you get to the last page, or use Github's newer GraphQL API (which I think doesn't have the same limits).

[sdruskat]

Thanks @orvn. No, there's no page key. I'm not aware that I had seen one before, but I may have missed it as well.
I do get rel links in the link header.

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