How to pass multiple tags (OR between the tags) to the Stack Exchange Questions/Unanswered API

Question

I am using the /questions/unanswered API to try and get all unanswered questions, sorted by upvotes, and with the tags specified.

How can I pass multiple tags to the /unanswered route(s) using OR-logic between those tags?

For example: I want to look for unanswered questions with tags Vm OR vmss OR azure-functions.

I know that passing tagged=c;java will return only those questions with both tags as this is an AND constraint. I am looking for OR constraint.

If this API does not allow OR-ing the tags, then is there an alternate way of achieving this?

Answer 1

Theoretically, you could do this with the /search/advanced route.
But, due to a bug, that route does not OR its tags as it is supposed to.
Go and upvote that bug report, and theoretically it will get fixed sooner.

For now, the workaround will require a little bit more work from your app:

1. Use the /questions/unanswered route ^{_{(or the /search/advanced route with accepted=False)}} to query the tags one at a time.
2. Merge the results from step one, discarding duplicates.
3. Sort to taste.

For example, suppose I wanted the unanswered questions tagged either unityscript OR rate-limiting.
I would do the following:

1. Fetch questions/unanswered?tagged=unityscript^(link), paging as necessary.

2. That gets results like:

   "items": [ {
       "tags": ["c#", "unity3d", "game-engine", "unityscript"],
       "owner": { "display_name": "Ahmed Zafar" },
       "answer_count": 1,
       "score": 7,
       "creation_date": 1432146724,
       "last_edit_date": 1432235001,
       "question_id": 30357724,
       "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30357724/destroying-clone-destroys-all-clones",
       "title": "Destroying clone destroys all clones"
     }, {
       "tags": ["c#", "unity3d", "unityscript"],
       "owner": { "display_name": "Sora" },
       "answer_count": 2,
       "score": 4,
       "creation_date": 1425211434,
       "last_edit_date": 1425215933,
       "question_id": 28793306,
       "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28793306/unity3d-crash-after-switching-a-scene-containing-a-webcamtexture",
       "title": "Unity3d crash after switching a scene containing a webcamtexture"
     },
     //etc.
   

3. Fetch questions/unanswered?tagged=rate-limiting^(link), paging as necessary.

4. That gets results like:

   "items": [ {
       "tags": ["java", "spring", "spring-security", "oauth-2.0", "rate-limiting"],
       "owner": { "display_name": "aj.esler" },
       "answer_count": 5,
       "score": 14,
       "creation_date": 1334619572,
       "question_id": 10183168,
       "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10183168/how-to-implement-rate-limiting-based-on-a-client-token-in-spring",
       "title": "How to implement rate limiting based on a client token in Spring?"
     }, {
       "tags": ["nginx", "rate-limiting"],
       "owner": { "display_name": "linbo" },
       "answer_count": 1,
       "score": 9,
       "creation_date": 1363835060,
       "question_id": 15538728,
       "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15538728/does-nginx-httplimitreqmodule-support-per-hour-day-week",
       "title": "Does nginx HttpLimitReqModule support per hour/day/week?"
     },
     //etc.
   

5. Merge the result sets, discarding any duplicate question_ids:

   {
     "score": 7,
     "question_id": 30357724,
     ...
   }, {
     "score": 4,
     "question_id": 28793306,
     ...
   },
   //etc.
   {
     "score": 14,
     "question_id": 10183168,
     ...
   }, {
     "score": 9,
     "question_id": 15538728,
     ...
   },
   //etc.
   

6. Sort to taste:

   {
     "score": 14,
     "question_id": 10183168,
     ...
   }, {
     "score": 9,
     "question_id": 15538728,
     ...
   }, {
     "score": 7,
     "question_id": 30357724,
     ...
   }, {
     "score": 4,
     "question_id": 28793306,
     ...
   },
   //etc.
   

7. Done!