Handling content-types errors
What happens when you ask for a response in a specific format but the server cannot satisfy that request? Say you want to receive the response in XML rather than JSON. If the server can not respond in XML, it will respond with a specific status-code indicating that it can't reply in the requested format. The status code used in this case is 406 Not Acceptable or 406 in short. The response from the server also frequently contains an accept header which includes a list of all response formats it can respond with. Use this to learn what content types the API can respond with.
This exercise is part of the course
Introduction to APIs in Python
Exercise instructions
- Add an
acceptheader to request a response in theapplication/xmlcontent-type from the server. - Check if the server did not accept the request using the relevant status code.
- Print out a list of accepted content types from the server response.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Add a header to use in the request
headers = {____}
response = requests.get('http://localhost:3000/lyrics', headers=headers)
# Check if the server did not accept the request
if (response.____ == ____):
print('The server can not respond in XML')
# Print the accepted content types
print('These are the content types the server accepts: ' + response.____)
else:
print(response.text)