Expected object or value

Question

I have setup a developer account and created a access token as described in the docs using "custom application" and providing key, id and secret in the console.

Requests made via the console such as get_survey_list work fine.

However if I try any other http client like curl I get this:

{"status":3,"errmsg":"Expected object or value"}

The curl code is:

curl -H 'Authorization:bearer xxx' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' https://api.surveymonkey.net/v2/surveys/get_survey_list/?api_key=xxx --data-binary ''

I have tried other methods (httpclient, poster, in my appliction) I always get this result. My request looks absolutely identical to the request data that is shown in the console output.

The only request that works is user/get_user_details.

Can anybody help? Thanks Gordon

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 28 '14 at 10:59

1

You have to request certain data fields with the --data-binary flag. For example, if I want:

"title","analysis_url","date_created","date_modified"

my curl statement looks like this:

curl -H 'Authorization:bearer xxx' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' https://api.surveymonkey.net/v2/surveys/get_survey_list/?api_key=xxx --data-binary '{"fields":["title","analysis_url","date_created","date_modified"]}'

(please replace XXX with your authenticate parameters)

Read more details here - the page also includes a full example of the curl statement:

curl -H 'Authorization:bearer XXXYYYZZZ' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' https://api.surveymonkey.net/v2/surveys/get_survey_list/?api_key=your_api_key --data-binary '{"fields":["title","analysis_url","date_created","date_modified"], "start_date":"2013-02-02 00:00:00", "end_date":"2013-04-12 22:43:01", "order_asc":false, "title":"test3"}'

answered May 28 '14 at 10:59

philshem

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cool thx. that worked. I dont see this in the documentation though. Here https://developer.surveymonkey.com/mashery/get_survey_list it is stated that fields among all other params are optional. – migo May 28 '14 at 11:49
Good point. The SM dev team is active here, so I'm sure they can clarify. – philshem May 28 '14 at 11:52
I guess without any fields, you still need --data-binary '{"fields":[]}' – philshem May 28 '14 at 12:04
2

You need to provide it with at least an empty json dictionary - e.g. '{}' – Miles Cederman-Haysom May 28 '14 at 17:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 29 '14 at 16:20

get_survey_details can be called with no parameters, but it still requires a valid JSON object to be POSTed. As Miles commented, a simple empty JSON object will suffice: {}

The error message you got, "Expected object or value", indicates that no JSON object could be decoded from the POST data.

Expected object or value

2 Answers2

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