Python HTTP Request Binary Data using Requests

curl, http, python, python-requests, url-parameters

Solution

The `curl` `-d` switch sends a `POST` request, but you are using `requests.get()` instead, sending a `GET` request (whose body is ignored).

Make it a POST instead, by using `request.post()`:

import requests
import json

url = "http://cdcnepal.com/Modules/HOmeMoviesLists/WebService2.asmx/GetShowsByDate"
headers = {"content-type": "application/json; charset=UTF-8"}
payload = {"portalId":"1","showDate":"26/05/2014","flag":0,"size":9}
r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, data=json.dumps(payload))
print r.text

You also need to:

- not use a list for the `content-type` header, there is no support for paramaters being specified separately.

- Encode your JSON data to a JSON string; `requests` doesn't do this for you. Instead, a dictionary passed to `data` is encoded as `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` data instead.

You can compare the `curl` command with `requests` more easily using http://httpbin.org/post:

$ curl http://httpbin.org/post \
>  -H 'Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8' \
>  -d '{"portalId":"1","showDate":"26/05/2014","flag":0,"size":9}'

{
  "args": {},
  "data": "{\"portalId\":\"1\",\"showDate\":\"26/05/2014\",\"flag\":0,\"size\":9}",
  "files": {},
  "form": {},
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Connection": "close",
    "Content-Length": "58",
    "Content-Type": "application/json; charset=UTF-8",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "User-Agent": "curl/7.30.0",
    "X-Request-Id": "78d7bb7d-e29b-482b-908a-48d2395a050f"
  },
  "json": {
    "flag": 0,
    "portalId": "1",
    "showDate": "26/05/2014",
    "size": 9
  },
  "origin": "84.92.98.170",
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/post"
}

and

>>> import requests
>>> import json
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> url = 'http://httpbin.org/post'
>>> headers = {"content-type":"application/json; charset=UTF-8"}
>>> payload = {"portalId":"1","showDate":"26/05/2014","flag":0,"size":9}
>>> r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, data=json.dumps(payload))
>>> pprint(r.json())
{u'args': {},
 u'data': u'{"portalId": "1", "flag": 0, "size": 9, "showDate": "26/05/2014"}',
 u'files': {},
 u'form': {},
 u'headers': {u'Accept': u'*/*',
              u'Accept-Encoding': u'gzip, deflate, compress',
              u'Connection': u'close',
              u'Content-Length': u'65',
              u'Content-Type': u'application/json; charset=UTF-8',
              u'Host': u'httpbin.org',
              u'User-Agent': u'python-requests/2.2.1 CPython/2.7.6 Darwin/13.1.0',
              u'X-Request-Id': u'06d6b542-c279-4898-8701-2c0d502aa36e'},
 u'json': {u'flag': 0,
           u'portalId': u'1',
           u'showDate': u'26/05/2014',
           u'size': 9},
 u'origin': u'84.92.98.170',
 u'url': u'http://httpbin.org/post'}

Both cases show the same `json` dictionary being returned.

If you are using `requests` version 2.4.2 or newer, you can also leave the JSON encoding to the library; it'll set the correct Content-Type header too, if you pass in the data to send as the `json` keyword argument:

import requests

url = "http://cdcnepal.com/Modules/HOmeMoviesLists/WebService2.asmx/GetShowsByDate"
payload = {"portalId":"1","showDate":"26/05/2014","flag":0,"size":9}
r = requests.post(url, json=payload)
print r.text

Problem

Original source