> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.prov.ae/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Search communities and areas > Type-ahead over the whole location tree, relevance-ranked when a term is given. Omit the term to page the tree. Offset-paged like the developers endpoint; `page` is rejected with 422. A lead has no location-id field — `areaOfInterest` is matched by NAME — so send `name`, and show `path` in your picker: hundreds of leaf names repeat across the tree, and an ambiguous name cannot be linked. ## OpenAPI ````yaml /api-reference/openapi.json get /public/locations/search openapi: 3.0.3 info: title: Provident — Lead Intake API version: 1.4.0 description: >- Server-to-server API for pushing leads into the Provident CRM. Core endpoints: 1. `POST /oauth2/token` — exchange client credentials for a bearer token. 2. `POST /public/leads` — create a CRM lead. 3. `PUT /public/leads/{id}` — add details you did not have when you created it (quiz answers the customer finished afterwards, a budget, an area). Send only what changed; phones and emails are appended, never replaced, and the lead's stage, status, owner and funnel are not writable. Optional read-only reference data, using the same token: locations, developers, projects and project statuses. Use them to send values that match ours, or to show project content on your own pages. They share the lead endpoint's rate limit, so cache them. Authentication is OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials; there is no user login. Note that the `/v2` prefix is part of the server URL and is mandatory. The intake is deliberately forgiving: name-based lookup fields that cannot be matched do NOT fail the request — the lead is still created and the unmatched values are returned in `intakeUnresolved`. The endpoint is not idempotent at the transport level, but intake hygiene runs before the lead is created: a second enquiry from the same phone/email within the merge window (~24h) is MERGED into the existing lead and returns a different, much shorter 201 body — `{ id, merged: true, matchedOn }` — with no contactId, intakeUnresolved, needsIntakeReview or createdAt. Always branch on `merged` before reading anything else. Enquiries from property-portal sources (Property Finder, Bayut, Dubizzle) are exempt and never merge. Retry only on network timeouts, 429 and 5xx. contact: name: Provident API support servers: - url: https://devapi.prov.ae/v2 description: Staging / development — build and test here - url: https://prodapi.prov.ae/v2 description: Production — live leads security: [] tags: - name: Authentication description: OAuth 2.0 client-credentials token issuance - name: Lead intake description: Public lead creation - name: Reference data description: Read-only lookups — locations, developers, projects, project statuses - name: Lead follow-up description: >- Reading back who a lead was assigned to, and recording the agent response time - name: Webhooks description: >- Calls Provident makes to YOUR server. Documented here for the payload shape; these are not endpoints you call. paths: /public/locations/search: get: tags: - Reference data summary: Search communities and areas description: >- Type-ahead over the whole location tree, relevance-ranked when a term is given. Omit the term to page the tree. Offset-paged like the developers endpoint; `page` is rejected with 422. A lead has no location-id field — `areaOfInterest` is matched by NAME — so send `name`, and show `path` in your picker: hundreds of leaf names repeat across the tree, and an ambiguous name cannot be linked. operationId: searchLocations parameters: - $ref: '#/components/parameters/Search' - $ref: '#/components/parameters/SearchAliasQ' - $ref: '#/components/parameters/SearchAliasQuery' - $ref: '#/components/parameters/LimitCapped' - $ref: '#/components/parameters/Offset' - $ref: '#/components/parameters/Sort' - $ref: '#/components/parameters/Order' responses: '200': description: Locations, offset-paged. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/PublicLocationListResponse' example: data: - id: 22222222-2222-2222-2222-222222222222 name: Dubai Marina level: '2' path: Dubai, Dubai Marina - id: 33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333 name: Marina level: '3' path: Ajman, Al Zorah, Marina meta: limit: 20 offset: 0 total: 350 '401': $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized' '422': $ref: '#/components/responses/ValidationFailed' '429': $ref: '#/components/responses/RateLimited' security: - bearerAuth: [] components: parameters: Search: name: search in: query required: false description: Search term. Aliases `q` and `query` are accepted for the same value. schema: type: string SearchAliasQ: name: q in: query required: false description: Alias for `search`. schema: type: string SearchAliasQuery: name: query in: query required: false description: Alias for `search`. schema: type: string LimitCapped: name: limit in: query required: false description: >- Page size, default 50, clamped to 200. `meta.limit` echoes the value actually applied, not what was asked for. schema: type: integer minimum: 1 maximum: 200 default: 50 Offset: name: offset in: query required: false description: Records to skip. schema: type: integer minimum: 0 default: 0 Sort: name: sort in: query required: false description: >- CSV of sort keys, most significant first; each may carry its own direction (`name:desc`, `-name`). Unknown keys are ignored. schema: type: string example: popular:desc,name:asc Order: name: order in: query required: false description: Default direction for sort keys that do not carry one. schema: type: string enum: - asc - desc default: asc schemas: PublicLocationListResponse: type: object properties: data: type: array items: $ref: '#/components/schemas/PublicLocation' meta: $ref: '#/components/schemas/OffsetMeta' PublicLocation: type: object description: One node of the community / area tree, trimmed for public use. properties: id: type: string format: uuid name: type: string example: Dubai Marina description: >- The leaf name. This is the value to send as a lead's `areaOfInterest` — but see `path`: names are NOT unique, and a name matching more than one node cannot be matched to a lead and comes back in `intakeUnresolved`. level: type: string nullable: true example: '2' description: Depth in the tree, as a string. path: type: string example: Ajman, Al Zorah, Marina description: >- Full ancestry, for telling two similarly named areas apart in a picker. OffsetMeta: type: object description: >- Offset paging envelope. `limit` echoes the value actually applied after clamping, not what was asked for. properties: limit: type: integer example: 50 offset: type: integer example: 0 total: type: integer example: 244 description: Unpaginated row count for the query. ApiError: type: object description: Common error envelope used by every endpoint. properties: statusCode: type: integer example: 400 code: type: string description: >- Stable machine-readable error code — branch on this, not on `message`. example: BAD_REQUEST message: type: string description: Human-readable description. errors: type: array items: type: string description: 'Present on 422 only: one entry per field that failed validation.' details: type: object additionalProperties: true description: Optional structured extras attached by the failing handler. path: type: string example: /v2/public/leads timestamp: type: string format: date-time responses: Unauthorized: description: Missing, invalid, revoked or expired bearer token. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiError' example: statusCode: 401 code: OAUTH_TOKEN_EXPIRED message: OAuth access token expired path: /v2/public/projects/filters timestamp: '2026-07-27T06:31:04.512Z' ValidationFailed: description: >- A parameter or field failed validation. Note that an UNRECOGNISED query parameter is rejected, not ignored — this is how a call written against the old `page`-based developers endpoint now fails. Fix the request; never retry it unchanged. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiError' example: statusCode: 422 code: VALIDATION_ERROR message: Validation failed errors: - property page should not exist path: /v2/public/developers?page=1&limit=2 timestamp: '2026-08-19T07:20:28.507Z' RateLimited: description: >- Request quota for this client exceeded. Wait `Retry-After` seconds, then resume. headers: Retry-After: description: Seconds to wait before retrying. schema: type: integer X-RateLimit-Limit: $ref: '#/components/headers/XRateLimitLimit' X-RateLimit-Remaining: $ref: '#/components/headers/XRateLimitRemaining' X-RateLimit-Reset: $ref: '#/components/headers/XRateLimitReset' content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiError' example: statusCode: 429 code: RATE_LIMITED message: Too Many Requests path: /v2/public/leads timestamp: '2026-07-27T06:31:04.512Z' headers: XRateLimitLimit: description: Requests allowed in the current window. schema: type: integer XRateLimitRemaining: description: Requests remaining in the current window. schema: type: integer XRateLimitReset: description: Seconds until the counter resets (end of the UTC day). schema: type: integer securitySchemes: bearerAuth: type: http scheme: bearer bearerFormat: Opaque description: >- The `access_token` returned by `POST /oauth2/token`, sent as `Authorization: Bearer `. It is an opaque string, not a JWT. ````