Photos mediaItems.search doesn't accept correct parameters

[alexhayes]

TL/DR This is not a bug - see my comment.

---

When attempting to call the search method from the mediaItems resource for Google Photos API with any of the allowed parameters an exception is thrown as follows;

TypeError: Got an unexpected keyword argument albumId

I suspect this has something to do with the discovery URL which, for the method in question, does not define any parameters.

As shown, it does define a request with a $ref of SearchMediaItemsRequest, which in the discovery URL is as follows;

As far as I can ascertain however google-api-python-client doesn't appear to reference $ref anywhere, so I am assuming it takes the method signature only from parameters defined in the discovery URL.

~~Oddly enough however, when the Resource is created, there are some parameters set for the search method, but these appear to be derived from somewhere else (perhaps oath2.v2.json???) See below;~~

EDIT: It would appear these are set by _fix_up_parameters in discovery.py which happens to all methods.

Given it appears the parameters in the discovery URL are incorrect, I'm unsure if this is a bug in google-api-python-client - if not, please direct me to where I should raise this.

NOTE: Calls without any parameters return the expected result (ie. media items).

Environment details

• OS type and version: OSX 11.6.4
• Python version: Python 3.10.0
• pip version: pip 22.0.4
• google-api-python-client version: 2.44.0

Steps to reproduce

1. Retrieve a Resource with serviceName='photoslibrary', version='v1'
2. Attempt to call service.mediaItems().search(albumId="xyz").execute()

Code example

import os

import typing

from google.auth.transport.requests import Request
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow
from googleapiclient.discovery import build, Resource


def create_credentials(secrets_path: str, scopes: typing.List[str]) -> Credentials:
    path = os.path.splitext(secrets_path)[0]
    tokens_path = f'{path}-cached-token.json'

    if os.path.exists(tokens_path):
        credentials = Credentials.from_authorized_user_file(tokens_path, scopes)
    else:
        credentials = None

    # If there are no (valid) credentials available, let the user log in.
    if not credentials or not credentials.valid:
        if credentials and credentials.expired and credentials.refresh_token:
            credentials.refresh(Request())
        else:
            flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(secrets_path, scopes)
            credentials = flow.run_local_server(port=0)

        # Save the credentials for the next run
        with open(tokens_path, 'w') as token:
            token.write(credentials.to_json())
    
    return credentials


def create_photos_service(secrets_path: str) -> Resource:
    credentials = create_credentials(
        secrets_path,
        [
            'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/photoslibrary'
        ]
    )
    
    return build('photoslibrary', 'v1', credentials=credentials, static_discovery=False)


service = create_photos_service("client_secret.json")
media_items = service.mediaItems().search(albumId="xyz").execute()

Stack trace

/path/to/.direnv/python-3.10.0/bin/python /path/to/helpers.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/helpers.py", line 59, in <module>
    media_items = service.mediaItems().search(pageSize="xyz").execute()
  File "/path/to/.direnv/python-3.10.0/lib/python3.10/site-packages/googleapiclient/discovery.py", line 1019, in method
    raise TypeError('Got an unexpected keyword argument {}'.format(name))
TypeError: Got an unexpected keyword argument albumId

Process finished with exit code 1

[alexhayes]

This can be closed as INVALID - it would appear that for methods that are HTTP POST you need to provide a body attribute with the values in it - as follows;

media_items = service.mediaItems().search(body=dict(albumId="xyz")).execute()

That seems somewhat unintuitive to me and I'm not able to find that documented - I just found it by chance as I was digging around StackOverflow (and yes, the issue template says "check SO", I did, but didn't find it initially).

As a consumer of an API, do I really care if it's a POST, GET, PATCH etc..? As an engineer I definitely want to know what happens under the hood, but it feels a bit off to be exposed to that by the interface signature. My assumption is there are good reasons.

If someone would like me to, I'm happy to document this via a PR if there is a particular area of the docs someone thinks is the best place to put it.

[parthea]

Hi @alexhayes,

I agree this information can be difficult to find. In case you're still interested in updating the docs, PRs are welcome !

[Victorivus]

This can be closed as INVALID - it would appear that for methods that are HTTP POST you need to provide a body attribute with the values in it - as follows;

media_items = service.mediaItems().search(body=dict(albumId="xyz")).execute()

That seems somewhat unintuitive to me and I'm not able to find that documented - I just found it by chance as I was digging around StackOverflow (and yes, the issue template says "check SO", I did, but didn't find it initially).

As a consumer of an API, do I really care if it's a POST, GET, PATCH etc..? As an engineer I definitely want to know what happens under the hood, but it feels a bit off to be exposed to that by the interface signature. My assumption is there are good reasons.

If someone would like me to, I'm happy to document this via a PR if there is a particular area of the docs someone thinks is the best place to put it.

I spent hours testing and surfing the internet until I found your comment, thanks !