Patent.Inventors field missing when using the package

[etaylo19]

When I check the patent endpoint on the PatentsView site: https://search.patentsview.org/docs/docs/Search%20API/EndpointDictionary/#patent ,
the nested field Inventors has a field inventor_location_id. Yet when I use get_fields('patent', groups = NULL), inventor_location_id does not appear among the 130 fields listed.

However, I can construct a query using 'httr' and 'jsonlite' that will retrieve Inventors.inventor_location_id.

[mustberuss]

Interesting observation! The R package parses the Patentsview swagger object to determine what fields are available. It's also the basis for the API team's Swagger UI page. For whatever reason, Inventors.inventor_location_id is not listed in the Swagger object and thus isn't returned by get_fields().

There's a new API shorthand (see "constructing your query" here - it's my fork- not sure what happened to it upstream) where you can request "inventors" as a field to get the entire nested object. get_fields() honors this, in my branch anyway, pending adoption in the ongoing PR. As a workaround you could use the shorthand.

The missing field should be raised as a API defect , the R package would pick up inventor_location_id when the API team adds it to the Swagger object.

library(patentsview)
query <- qry_funs$eq(patent_id = "10000000")
fields <- c("patent_id", "inventors")
sort <- c("patent_id"="asc")

result <- search_pv(query, fields=fields, sort=sort)
result$data$patents$inventors[[1]]$inventor_location_id
#> [1] "198b0471-16c8-11ed-9b5f-1234bde3cd05"
Created on 2025-09-23 with [reprex v2.1.1](https://reprex.tidyverse.org/)

[mustberuss]

I raised an API bug for the missing definition of inventors.inventor_location_id in the API's Swagger Object. Well rebuild the package when it's been updated. I probably should script a check of all the attributes, apparently the documentation is not being generated from the Swagger object!

[etaylo19]

Thank you for your prompt reply and helpful comment. Your package is going to save us a lot of work.Sent from my phone. Please excuse the brevity and thumbos.EdOn Sep 24, 2025, at 6:21 PM, Russ Allen ***@***.***> wrote:mustberuss left a comment (ropensci/patentsview#44) I raised an API bug for the missing definition of inventors.inventor_location_id in the API's Swagger Object. Well rebuild the package when it's been updated. I probably should script a check of all the attributes, apparently the documentation is not being generated from the Swagger object! —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mustberuss]

I scripted a comparison and have updated my defect with the API team. I didn't check if the API actually returns the fields listed below but they are in the online documentation and not in the Swagger object. On the plus side, 365 attributes matched. (There were a number of fields in the Swagger object that are not mentioned in the documentation and also some discrepancies in data_type on others).

These fields would be added to data-raw/fieldsdf.csv if the API team adds them to the Swagger object. Until then the R package wouldn't allow them to be queried or requested in the fields parameter.

< "patent","assignees.assignee","string","assignees"
< "patent","assignees.assignee_location_id","string","assignees"
< "patent","inventors.inventor","string","inventors"
< "patent","inventors.inventor_gender_code","string","inventors"
< "patent","inventors.inventor_location_id","string","inventors"

< "patent/foreign_citation","patent","string","foreign_citations"
< "patent/other_reference","patent","string","other_references"
< "patent/us_application_citation","patent","string","us_application_citations"
< "patent/us_patent_citation","patent","string","us_patent_citations"

< "publication","assignees.assignee","string","assignees"
< "publication","assignees.assignee_location_id","string","assignees"
< "publication","inventors.inventor","string","inventors"
< "publication","inventors.inventor_gender_code","string","inventors"
< "publication","inventors.inventor_location_id","string","inventors"
< "publication","pct_data.pct_371c124_date","date","pct_data"
< "publication","pct_data.pct_371c12_date","date","pct_data"

The columns in the csv are "endpoint","field","data_type","group"

[mustberuss]

The API team had a release recently that added several fields to the API's openapi definition, one of which was Inventors.inventor_location_id from the patent endpoint. The fieldsdf changes and code contributions from @JamesHWade were pushed to my branch and are now available on r-universe

Here's the full list of added attributes:
inventors.inventor_gender_code, inventors.inventor_id, inventors.inventor_location_id (patent/publication), assignees.assignee_location_id (publication)

[crew102]

Cool, thanks Russ. Is your branch ready to be opened as a pr into this repo, or were you thinking of keeping it separate?

[mustberuss]

Hey Chris. It should be a PR here, I'd have to check a diff with master here to see if it's ready. @JamesHWade offered to help in #42 to get the changes on CRAN He added recorded testing using vcr and cleaned up some of the code and tests in my branch. My branch has updated vignettes too but they could be a separate PR.

[mustberuss]

I just submitted #45 for this. The updated vignettes were already in my branch so the PR is bigger than I would have wanted, sorry!