CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonjsonpostcurlpython-requests
Leah
Leah

Reputation: 103

post-ing a file using python requests and json

I've been given the following curl command as part of API documentation, and I'm trying to implement it using the requests library.

curl -v --cookie cookie.txt -X POST -H 'Accept: application/json' -F 'spot[photo]'[email protected] -F 'spot[description]'=spot_description -F 'spot[location_id]'=9  -F 'spot[categories][]'='See the Sights' -F 'spot[categories][]'='Learn Something' http://some.server.com/api/v1/spots

my python code looks something like this:

import requests
import json

_user = 'redacted'
_password = 'redacted'
_session = requests.session()
_server = 'http://some.server.com'

_hdr = {'content-type': 'application/json', 'accept': 'application/json'}

_login_payload = {
    'user': {
        'email': _user,
        'password': _password
    }
}
r = _session.post(_server + "/users/sign_in", data=json.dumps(_login_payload), headers=_hdr)
print json.loads(r.content)

_spot_payload = {
    'spot': {
        'photo': '@rails.gif',
        'description': 'asdfghjkl',
        'location_id': 9,
        'categories': ['See the Sights',]
    }
}
r = _session.post(_server + '/api/v1/spots', data=json.dumps(_spot_payload), headers=_hdr)
print json.loads(r.content)

I've heard tell that you can use open('file').read() to post files, but the json encoder doesn't much like this, and I'm not sure about a way around it.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4169

Answers (1)

Piotr Dobrogost
Piotr Dobrogost

Reputation: 42425

C:\>cat file.txt
Some text.

When you issue this command:

C:\>curl -X POST -H "Accept:application/json" -F "spot[photo][email protected]"
-F "spot[description]=spot_description" http://localhost:8888

what's being sent looks like this:

POST / HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: curl/7.25.0 (i386-pc-win32) libcurl/7.25.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8u zlib/1.2.6 libssh2/1.4.0 Host: localhost:8888 Accept: application/json Content-Length: 325 Expect: 100-continue Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----------------------------e71aebf115cd

------------------------------e71aebf115cd Content-Disposition: form-data; name="spot[photo]"; filename="file.txt" Content-Type: text/plain

Some text. ------------------------------e71aebf115cd Content-Disposition: form-data; name="spot[description]"

spot_description ------------------------------e71aebf115cd--

As you can see curl sends request with Content-Type set to multipart/form-data; Requests support sending files using the same Content-Type. You should use files argument for this.

(2.7) C:\>python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Apr 10 2012, 23:24:47) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import requests
>>> requests.__version__
'0.11.1'
>>> requests.post('http://localhost:8888', files={'spot[photo]': open('file.txt', 'rb')}, data={'spot[description]': 'spot_description'})
<Response [200]>

And what's being sent looks like this:

POST http://localhost:8888/ HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8888
Content-Length: 342
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=192.168.1.101.1.8000.1334865122.004.1
Accept-Encoding: identity, deflate, compress, gzip
Accept: */*
User-Agent: python-requests/0.11.1

--192.168.1.101.1.8000.1334865122.004.1
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="spot[description]"
Content-Type: text/plain

spot_description
--192.168.1.101.1.8000.1334865122.004.1
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="spot[photo]"; filename="file.txt"
Content-Type: text/plain

Some text.
--192.168.1.101.1.8000.1334865122.004.1--

Upvotes: 3

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