How to search or filter SugarCRM REST API on a sub field

Question

This seems like a simple thing to do, but I can't get it working. I'm querying the /Users endpoint, and I'm trying to filter the users by an email address.

When I call the endpoint with no filters, I get something like this:

    "records": [
        {
          "id": "abc123",
          "user_name": "brad",
          "first_name": "Brad",
          ...
          "email1": "",
          "email": [
            {
              "email_address": "brad@email.com",
              "primary_address": true,
              "reply_to_address": false,
              "invalid_email": false,
              "opt_out": false
            }
          ],
          ...

I'm trying to filter on the email address. I've tried:

    $filters = [
        'filter' => [
            [
                'email.email_address' => [
                    '$contains' => 'brad'
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ];

But I get this error:

    {"error":"invalid_parameter","error_message":"Invalid link email for field email_address"}

I can filter by user_name = 'brad' and it works just fine, but not when I try to go 1 level deeper.

Answer 1

Had to email SugarCRM support directly.

Instead of:

    $filters = [
        'filter' => [
            [
                'email.email_address' => [
                    '$contains' => 'brad'
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ];

I needed to use email_addresses.email_address:

    $filters = [
        'filter' => [
            [
                'email_addresses.email_address' => [
                    '$contains' => 'brad'
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ];