How can I use the API to search for answers containing particular text or with particular properties? For example, this link allows me to search for is:answer foo, that is, answers containing foo. Can I do this with the current API?

Note: I have already searched the documentation, but didn't find anything like this.

  • 1
    Note that the /search paths are the only ones that allow much text searching and they omit answers by design. – Brock Adams Mar 5 '14 at 22:42
  • Thanks, Brock. Your first comment was what I was afraid of, and your second is spot-on. Make them into an answer and I will gladly accept it. – elixenide Mar 5 '14 at 23:04

I forget when, but sometime in the last couple of years, the /search/excerpts route started allowing is:answer in the q parameter.

For example:
          /2.2/search/excerpts?&q=Hear! is:answer&site=stackapps

-- which returns Stack Apps answers with the text "Hear!" in the body.

(Pretty sure I tested this in early 2014, and it didn't work then. But, other parts of the API have stealthily changed.)

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