pythonxmlhttplib

Can't get a successful response using httplib in Python

I am trying to connect to the FreshBooks API using python and httplib module. I have managed to do the job with the Requests package but because I am a starter, and want to learn, I would like also to make it work using the standard Python library.

So that's the code using httplib:

import base64, httplib

# test script created to connect with my test Freshbooks account

headers = {}
body = '/api/2.1/xml-in'
headers["Authorization"] = "Basic {0}".format(
    base64.b64encode("{0}:{1}".format('I have put here my Auth Token', 'user')))
headers["Content-type"] = "application/xml"

# the XML we ll send to Freshbooks
XML = """<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<request method="task.list">
  <page>1</page>
  <per_page>15</per_page>
</request>"""


# Enable the job
conn = httplib.HTTPSConnection('devjam-billing.freshbooks.com')
conn.request('POST', body, None, headers)
resp = conn.getresponse()
print resp.status
conn.send(XML)

print resp.read()
conn.close()

And that's what Freshbooks returns:

200                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
<response xmlns="http://www.freshbooks.com/api/" status="fail">                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
  <error>Your XML is not formatted correctly.</error>                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
  <code>40010</code>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
</response

On my second script where I used Packages I had the same response which I fixed adding headers in the post() function:

import requests

XML = """<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<request method="task.list">
    <page>1</page>
    <per_page>15</per_page>
</request>"""
headers = {'Content-Type': 'application/xml'} # set what your server accepts
 r = requests.post('https://devjam-billing.freshbooks.com/api/2.1/xml-in', auth=      ('my auth token', 'user'), data=XML, headers=headers)

 print r.status_code
 print r.headers['content-type']
 # get the response
 print r.text

I tried on the first one to do something similar by adding:

headers["Content-type"] = "application/xml"

without success.

Any ideas? Also is the b64encode a safe security option for encoding or is there a safer way to do it? Thanks.

Solution

  • you actually need to send the POST data (the XML string) in the request, so, replace this:

    conn.request('POST', body, None, headers)
resp = conn.getresponse()
print resp.status
conn.send(XML)
print resp.read()

    with this:

    conn.request('POST', body, XML, headers)
resp = conn.getresponse()
print resp.status
print resp.read()

    I hope it helps!