Archived Issues Unsupported in Search & Missing API Metadata

[JackEAllen]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug
Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

API

Body

When gathering metrics from a GitHub repository or performing targeted issue searches, archived issues do not appear to return their associated metadata (for example, Type, Labels, Custom Fields, and other project attributes). Instead, archived issues are presented as though no metadata exists, despite metadata being assigned prior to archiving when accessed via the GitHub API.

When using the GitHub issue search bar if i apply the filter: archived:true, my current understanding if correct is that archived issues for that repository would be returned. My experience is that no issues are returned.

This creates several challenges:

• Historic issue searches become significantly less effective, as archived issues cannot be filtered or analysed using their original metadata.
• Repository metrics may be skewed, as archived issues are effectively excluded from metadata-driven repository progress reporting and analysis.
• Projects may be discouraged from archiving issues if doing so impacts discoverability and long-term reporting accuracy.

Perceived Expected Behaviour

Archived issues should continue to expose their existing metadata and remain searchable/filterable using that metadata, even if the issue itself is archived.

Request

Could support for archived issue metadata be reviewed so that archived issues expose their Type, Labels, Fields and other project metadata correctly? This would improve historical analysis, reporting accuracy, and issue discoverability without requiring projects to keep older issues unarchived.

Alternatively, can I suggest that is is made very clear to users when turning on archiving for issues on closure within GItHub and in supported documentation that metadata will no longer be accessible for archived issues and it will not be possible to search based on a filter for archived issues.

Update:
archived is not a supported filter under the is search operator for GitHub issues or global GitHub search. Filtering by "archived" is also not visibly an available option within the global search advanced filtering options.

This issue therefore becomes a user feature request for API and search support for archived issue filtering to allow for finding issues which are archived. Additionally, it is requested that issue metadata is still returned rather than None if it exists for an archived issue.
Please see below conversion for additional context.

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[danilablagorodniy37]

Hey! One thing that might explain the search part: archived:true doesn’t mean “archived issues”. It filters issues that are in archived repositories. That’s why you get nothing if your repo itself isn’t archived.

For archived items, try is:archived is:issue instead. You may need to be a repo admin to see the results.

The missing labels/types/fields through the API sounds like a real gap, though, so it’s good you reported it. Good luck!

[JackEAllen]

Thanks, knowing that archived:true is not the correct way to search for archived issues is helpful to know. I have tried is:archived is:issue and sadly did not have any such luck finding archived issues within this repository. archived does not seem to be a supported filter for the is: search operator. I am confident archived issues exist in the project which can be evidenced by knowing this issue exists and is archived, but sadly is not found when trying to find archived issues.

Can I ask why being a repository admin may make a difference? I am both an admin of my GitHub organisation and the repository I have tried searching for archived issues within.

[danilablagorodniy37]

Ah, sorry about that, my mistake! I checked again, and GitHub’s docs only list is:archived for pull requests, not issues. The admin part also came from the PR docs, which say archived PRs only show up for repo admins. So it doesn’t apply to you here, since you’re already an admin.

One last thing worth a quick try: the global search at github.com/search works a bit differently from the repo’s Issues bar. Try repo:OWNER/REPO is:issue is:archived there.

If that doesn’t work either, it looks like there’s simply no supported way to search archived issues yet. I’d add that to your post, because it makes your feedback even stronger.

[JackEAllen]

Not to worry, thanks for the suggestion to try with global search. No luck hear sadly either. I think filtering by archived issues may not be supported currently then. I checked available search filters in advanced options and also cannot see any information in GitHub docs relating specifically to archived issues, only archived repositories or pull requests so this sounds like it will now fall under a feature request. It would be really helpful to have this in the API interface and as a GitHub search filter going forward. I'll update the post to reflect this.

[JackEAllen]

Update: archived is not a supported filter under the is search operator for GitHub issues or global GitHub search. Filtering by "archived" is also not visibly an available option within the global search advanced filtering options.

This issue therefore becomes a user feature request for API and search support for archived issue filtering to allow for finding issues which are archived. Additionally, it is requested that issue metadata is still returned rather than None if it exists for an archived issue. Please see below conversion for additional context.

[JackEAllen]

I've updated the issue description from "Bug" to "Product Feedback". @danilablagorodniy37 could you please update the label to reflect this?