Question :
I am getting error Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0) when trying to decode JSON.
The URL I use for the API call works fine in the browser, but gives this error when done through a curl request. The following is the code I use for the curl request.
The error happens at return simplejson.loads(response_json)
response_json = self.web_fetch(url)
response_json = response_json.decode('utf-8')
return json.loads(response_json)
def web_fetch(self, url):
buffer = StringIO()
curl = pycurl.Curl()
curl.setopt(curl.URL, url)
curl.setopt(curl.TIMEOUT, self.timeout)
curl.setopt(curl.WRITEFUNCTION, buffer.write)
curl.perform()
curl.close()
response = buffer.getvalue().strip()
return response
Full Traceback:
Traceback:
File "/Users/nab/Desktop/myenv2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py" in get_response
111. response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
File "/Users/nab/Desktop/pricestore/pricemodels/views.py" in view_category
620. apicall=api.API().search_parts(category_id= str(categoryofpart.api_id), manufacturer = manufacturer, filter = filters, start=(catpage-1)*20, limit=20, sort_by='[["mpn","asc"]]')
File "/Users/nab/Desktop/pricestore/pricemodels/api.py" in search_parts
176. return simplejson.loads(response_json)
File "/Users/nab/Desktop/myenv2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/simplejson/__init__.py" in loads
455. return _default_decoder.decode(s)
File "/Users/nab/Desktop/myenv2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/simplejson/decoder.py" in decode
374. obj, end = self.raw_decode(s)
File "/Users/nab/Desktop/myenv2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/simplejson/decoder.py" in raw_decode
393. return self.scan_once(s, idx=_w(s, idx).end())
Exception Type: JSONDecodeError at /pricemodels/2/dir/
Exception Value: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)
Answer #1:
To summarize the conversation in the comments:
-
There is no need to use
simplejsonlibrary, the same library is included with Python as thejsonmodule. -
There is no need to decode a response from UTF8 to unicode, the
simplejson/json.loads()method can handle UTF8 encoded data natively. -
pycurlhas a very archaic API. Unless you have a specific requirement for using it, there are better choices.
requests offers the most friendly API, including JSON support. If you can, replace your call with:
import requests
return requests.get(url).json()
Answer #2:
Check the response data-body, whether actual data is present and a data-dump appears to be well-formatted.
In most cases your json.loads– JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0) error is due to :
- non-JSON conforming quoting
- XML/HTML output (that is, a string starting with <), or
- incompatible character encoding
Ultimately the error tells you that at the very first position the string already doesn’t conform to JSON.
As such, if parsing fails despite having a data-body that looks JSON like at first glance, try replacing the quotes of the data-body:
import sys, json
struct = {}
try:
try: #try parsing to dict
dataform = str(response_json).strip("'<>() ").replace(''', '"')
