Develop Reference

Python Requests Programmatically get Dev Tools Form Data pre-formatted as a dictionary

I am trying to update an already saved form on a system using HTTP requests. Due to the server configuration for the third party app we use, updating by POST requires sending a fully filled out payload every single time.
I want to get round this by recovering the form data already present on the server and converting it into a dictionary. Then changing any values I need and reposting to make changes sever side.
The application we use sends a POST request when the save button is clicked for a particular form.
Here I send a post request with no payload.
[This simulates pressing the save button and is also the point where dev tools shows me a the payload I want to capture]
post_test = self.session.post(url_to_retrieve_from)
I thought that now I should be able to print the output, which should resemble what Google Dev tools Form data captures.
print(post_test.text)
This just gives me html found on the webpage.
If Dev Tools can get this from the server then I should also be able to?
Example of Data I am trying to get via requests:
Form Data

If Dev Tools can get this from the server then I should also be able to?
Yes, of course. In requests you pass form data in data keyword:
import requests
url = 'http://www.example.com'
data = {
'name': 'value',
}
response = requests.post(url, data=data)
You can get the data you sent with a request from the response in this way:
import requests
response = requests.post('http://your_url', data=data) # send request
body = response.request.body
parsed_data = dict(data.split('=') for data in body.split('&')) # parse request body
Here you can find more information about data argument
In the documentation, in the class requests.Response we can find the attribute:
request = None
The PreparedRequest object to which this is a response.
In requests.PreparedRequest class we can read:
body = None
request body to send to the server.

Trouble getting data from REST http service using requests package

This works fine, I can get data returned:
r = urllib2.Request("http://myServer.com:12345/myAction")
data = json.dumps(q) #q is a python dict
r.add_data(data)
r=urllib2.urlopen(r)
But doing the same with requests package fails:
r=requests.get("http://myServer.com:12345/myAction", data=q)
r.text #This will return a message that says method is not allowed.
It works if I make it a post request: r=requests.post("http://myServer.com:12345/myAction", data=json.dumps(q))
But why?

According to the urllib2.urlopen documentation:
the HTTP request will be a POST instead of a GET when the data parameter is provided.
This way, r=urllib2.urlopen(r) is also making a POST request. That is why your requests.get does not work, but requests.post does.

Set up a session
import session
session = requests.Session()
r = session.get("http://myServer.com:12345/myAction", data=q)
print r.content (<- or could us r.raw)

API Post Python

I am trying to make a post request within the Matchbook API.
I have logged in and I got below "Session- Tocken":
{"session-token":"xxxx_b0b8a6f22a82396b6afcfa344f3022","user-id":xx685,"role":"USER"}
However, I am not sure how to make the post request. See below code used:
headers = {"session-token" : "xxxx_b0b8a6f22a82396b6afcfa344f3022"}
r = requests.post('https://api.matchbook.com/edge/rest/reports/v1/offers/current/?odds-type=DECIMAL&exchange-type=binary&currency=EUR, headers = headers')
print r.text
Below is the error message that I got. It does not make sense to me because I logged in successfully and got the above session-token in response.
{"errors":[{"messages":["You are not authorised to access this resource. Login to continue."]}]}
Am I properly indicating the session-token in the header information of the post request?

You need to pass headers argument in post function.
headers = {"session-token" : "xxxx_b0b8a6f22a82396b6afcfa344f3022"}
response = requests.post('https://api.matchbook.com/edge/rest/reports/v1/offers/current/?odds-type=DECIMAL&exchange-type=binary&currency=EUR', headers=headers)
also if you need to get an json response, just call json() function on response variable.
something like response.json()

slack api calls through python request library

I was making slack api calls through python library slackclient which is a wrapper around slack api. However, for some cases I need to make conventional api calls also with url and get/post method. I was trying to open a direct message channel with another user by my bot. The documentation - https://api.slack.com/methods/im.open says to "Present these parameters as part of an application/x-www-form-urlencoded querystring or POST body. application/json is not currently accepted."
Now in python, I can write,
url = 'https://slack.com/api/im.open'
headers = {'content-type':'x-www-form-urlencoded'}
data = {'token':BOT_TOKEN, 'user':user_id, 'include_locale':'true','return_im':'true'}
r= requests.post(url,headers,data )
print r.text
The message I get is {"ok":false,"error":"not_authed"}
I know the message is "not authed" although I use my bot token and another user id, my hunch is that I'm sending the request in wrong format because I just wrote it some way reading the documentation. I'm not sure how to exactly send these requests.
Any help?

since the Content-Type header is x-www-form-urlencoded sending data in form of dictionary does not work. you can try something like this.
import requests
url = 'https://slack.com/api/im.open'
headers = {'content-type': 'x-www-form-urlencoded'}
data = [
('token', BOT_TOKEN),
('user', user_id),
('include_locale', 'true'),
('return_im', 'true')
]
r = requests.post(url, data, **headers)
print r.text

The second parameter in requests.post is used for data, so in your request you're actually posting the headers dictionary. If you want to use headers you can pass arguments by name.
r= requests.post(url, data, headers=headers)
However this is not necessary in this case because 'x-www-form-urlencoded' is the default when posting form data.

Making a successful Python HTTP POST Request

I am trying to write a python script that will make a request to a desktop application listening to 8080 port. The below is the code that I use to make the request.
import requests
payload = {"url":"abcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxyz=",
"password":"qertyuioplkjhgfdsazxvnm=",
"token":"abcdefghijklmn1254786=="}
headers = {'Content-Type':'application/json'}
r = requests.post('http://localhost:9015/login',params = payload, headers=headers)
response = requests.get("http://localhost:9015/login")
print(r.status_code)
After making the request, I get a response code of 401.
However, when I try the same using the Postman app, I get a successful response. The following are the details I give in Postman:
URL: http://localhost:9015/login
METHOD : POST
Headers: Content-Type:application/json
Body: {"url":"abcdefghiklmnopqrstuvwxyz=",
"password":"qertyuioplkjhgfdsazxvnm=",
"token":"abcdefghijklmn1254786=="}
Can I get some suggestions on where I am going wrong with my python script?

You pass params, when you should pass data, or, even better, json for setting Content-Type automatically. So, it should be:
import json
r = requests.post('http://localhost:9015/login', data=json.dumps(payload), headers=headers)
or
r = requests.post('http://localhost:9015/login', json=payload)
(params adds key-value pairs to query parameters in the url)