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Python - Spotify API returning Error 400 "Malformed JSON"

Heyo. I'm trying to make a small application in my spare time that uses the Spotify API . I have managed to get my program to use oAuth 2 to let a user authorize my app to manipulate their Spotify, but I have run into a problem with a certain endpoint on the Spotify API.
The endpoint I am having trouble with is https://api.spotify.com/v1/me/player/play (here's a link to their docs for the endpoint https://developer.spotify.com/console/put-play/). Whenever I try to make a put request to the endpoint I receive a 400 status code with the message "Malformed json" I get this message even when I copy/paste their own json from the docs, so I don't think it's a problem with how I am formatting my json, besides I have used json before to call other endpoints and they haven't had a problem with my formatting on those calls.
Here is my code:
headers = {"Authorization":"Bearer {}".format(access_token)}
url = 'https://api.spotify.com/v1/me/player/play'
payload = {"context_uri": "spotify:album:5ht7ItJgpBH7W6vJ5BqpPr"}
r = requests.put(url, headers=headers, data=payload)
print(r)
print(r.text)
To clarify, access_token is the access token that I have gotten from their authorization process, and I am using python-requests to make the http requests (Here is the docs for that: https://requests.kennethreitz.org/en/master/)
I am wondering if the problem is due to the fact that Spotify uses colons int their track IDs and colons are also used in JSON? I saw in another thread on here that I should try to add "Content-Type":"application/json" to my headers but that didn't change the outcome at all.
Any help is greatly appreciated, and if you need any more info please let me know. Thank you!

If your payload is a dict use json kwargs in requests lib. data works for string payload. Here you go:
r = requests.put(url, headers=headers, json=payload)

Python POST request with XPATH

Please help me convert a working URL request in the web browser to a python request module executable request.
My working browser request URL:
https://192.168.100.25/api?type=config&action=set&xpath=/config/devices/entry[#name=%27localhost.localdomain%27]/network/interface/ethernet/entry[#name=%27ethernet1/1%27]/layer3/ip&element=%3Centry%20name=%279.6.6.6/24%27/%3E
This device basically accepts Rest API calls in XML format. Please help me, convert this to a python requests POST request.

I have found a way to do this with Python Requests:
url = '''https://192.168.100.25/api?
type=config&action=set&xpath=/config/devices&element='''
out = requests.post(url, verify=False, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(username, password))
This is working.
Please let me know if there is an easier and proper way to do this.

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.

Requests works and URLFetch doesn't

I'm trying to make a request to the particle servers in python in a google app engine app.
In my terminal, I can complete the request simply and successfully with requests as:
res = requests.get('https://api.particle.io/v1/devices', params={"access_token": {ACCESS_TOKEN}})
But in my app, the same thing doesn't work with urlfetch, which keeps telling me it can't find the access token:
url = 'https://api.particle.io/v1/devices'
payload = {"access_token": {ACCESS_TOKEN}}
form_data = urllib.urlencode(payload)
res = urlfetch.fetch(
url=url,
payload=form_data,
method=urlfetch.GET,
headers={
'Content-Type':
'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
},
follow_redirects=False
)
I have no idea what the problem is, and no way to debug. Thanks!

In a nutshell, your problem is that in your urlfetch sample you're embedding your access token into the request body, and since you're issuing a GET request -which cannot carry any request body with them- this information gets discarded.
Why does your first snippet work?
Because requests.get() takes that optional params argument that means: "take this dictionary I give you, convert all its key/value pairs into a query string and append it to the main URL"
So, behind the curtains, requests.get() is building a string like this:
https://api.particle.io/v1/devices?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN
That's the correct endpoint you should point your GET requests to.
Why doesn't your second snippet work?
This time, urlfetch.fetch() uses a different syntax than requests.get() (but equivalent nonetheless). The important bit to note here is that payload argument doesn't mean the same as our params argument that you used before in requests.get().
urlfetch.fetch() expects our query string -if any- to be already urlencoded into the URL (that's why urllib.urlencode() comes into play here). On the other hand, payload is where you should put your request body in case you were issuing a POST, PUT or PATCH request, but particle.io's endpoint is not expecting your OAuth access token to be there.
Something like this should work (disclaimer: not tested):
auth = {"access_token": {ACCESS_TOKEN}}
url_params = urllib.urlencode(auth)
url = 'https://api.particle.io/v1/devices?%s' % url_params
res = urlfetch.fetch(
url=url,
method=urlfetch.GET,
follow_redirects=False
)
Notice how now we don't need your previous Content-type header anymore, since we aren't carrying any content after all. Hence, headers parameter can be removed from this example call.
For further reference, take a look at urlfetch.fetch() reference and this SO thread that will hopefully give you a better insight into HTTP methods, parameters and request bodies than my poor explanation here.
PS: If particle.io servers support it (they should), you should move away from this authentication schema and carry your tokens in a Authorization: Bearer <access_token> header instead. Carrying access tokens in URLs is not a good idea because they are much more visible that way and tend to stay logged in servers, hence posing a security risk. On the other hand, in a TLS session all request headers are always encrypted so your auth tokens are well hidden there.

Ok, so, as it turns out, one cannot include a payload for a GET request using Urlfetch. Instead, one has to include the parameters in the url using the '?' syntax as follows:
url = 'https://api.particle.io/v1/devices'
url = url + '?access_token=' + {ACCESS_TOKEN}
res = urlfetch.fetch(
url=url,
method=urlfetch.GET,
follow_redirects=False
)
this worked for me.

Yggdrasil authentication with Python

I decided to try to make an automated login script for Minecraft. However, the new authentication API is stumping me. I can't find any mentions of the new functionality of the API on here. This is my code as it stands:
import requests
import json
data = json.dumps({"agent":{"name":"Minecraft","version":1},"username":"abcdef","password":"abcdef","clientToken":""})
headers = {'Content-Type': 'application/json'}
r = requests.post('https://authserver.mojang.com', data=data, headers=headers)
print (r.text)
Unfortunately, this returns:
{"error":"Method Not Allowed","errorMessage":"The method specified in the request is not allowed for the resource identified by the request URI"}
According to this resource on request format, this error means that I didn't correctly send a post request. However, I clearly declared requests.post(), so my first question is how am I incorrect, and what is the correct way to go about this?
My second question is, since I'm relatively new to Python and JSON, how would I replace the username and password fields with my own data, inside a variable?

You haven't specified an endpoint in your POST request, for example:
https://authserver.mojang.com/authenticate
The root of the website probably does not accept POST requests
http://wiki.vg/Authentication#Authenticate