I want to fetch questions from a certain offset. Not a minimum creation date, just an offset index, independent of the sort and order I'm using. How can I do this? Is it possible at all?
Page/pagesize are NOT suitable for me in this case, as I want to be able to pick an offset that is not dividable by the pagesize, too.
I assume you mean an offset into questions ordered by question_id. That begs a lot of questions, but...
You can convert between question_id and creation_date given the knowledge that question_id increases monotonically. However, you can't guarantee the number of requests such an operation will take - though in practice more than 5 would be somewhat unusual*.
Make a query to /questions/{id} where id = desired offset, then make a request to /questions?fromdate={startdate}&sort=creation&order=asc where startdate = the creation date returned by the previous /questions/{id} query. That will give you a set of questions from the desired offset ordered by question_id. You can use fromdate to the same effect (minimum question_id to return) in most other queries.
The tricky part is if the question with the desired offset has been deleted, in which case you'll have to increment {id} until you find a subsequent question that has not.
*Such large gaps of deleted questions are indicative of periods of abuse that have been cleaned up subsequently.
question_id. I meant any order. I know it is possible to get the desired range of questions with a maximum of two requests with page/pagesize parameters. I just wondered if it would be possible in one request.
/questions/1;2;3;4;5;6 for example, up until the path grows too large to handle) but there is no way to restrict returned values by question_id.
Commented
Jul 13, 2010 at 10:55