API - fuzzy search possible?

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James Taylor

• March 21, 2016 15:09

Is it possible to perform an approximate string match on items in an app using the API? 

We have a couple of apps in which we store all our contacts - one for companies/organisations and another for the actual contacts (where the "company" is an app reference).

We take online registrations for webinars, conferences, and events and would like to use the API to insert each registration as an item in the company and contact apps. However, what if the company/contact already exists but their name has been entered in a slightly different format by the user (eg WidgetCo vs WidgetCo Ltd)?

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  Domenico Matteo

  • April 11, 2016 11:40

  Hi James,
  
  our search endpoint already does partial matches, in any textual field of the item including title.
  
  Hope that helps,
  Domenico

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  James Taylor

  • April 12, 2016 11:23

  Hi Domenico,

  Thanks - We use Podio as a sort of CRM and would like to take data from our sign-up form (name, company, etc) and add a new item if it doesn't exist or "append" to an existing item. The stumbling block is determining if a company or person already exists in the app, given free-form entry (eg ACME Inc, vs ACME Ltd vs ACME, etc).

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  Domenico Matteo

  • April 19, 2016 09:37

  You could use our reference/search endpoint and then do some comparisons with the results you get back, to ensure you don't add duplicates.

  Since the first results are the most fitting, assuming that there are not a thousand differently typed companies that are the same, you can just look through the first ten results or something like that.

  You can of course be as clever as you want with your matching algorithm, once you retrieved the data using search (e.g. calculating the "distance" from your target word and stopping at a threshold you feel confident)

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