Cannot turn response.text into a dictionary in Python

Question

I am using the Python request module and having trouble converting my response.text into a Python dictionary.

def my_function():
    url = API_URI["test"]
    headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json', 'Accept': 'text/plain'}    
    r = requests.post(url, data=json.dumps(api), headers=headers)
    print(r.text)
    dict = r.json()
    return dict
my_function()

Here is the printed response from r.text

{"subscriptionId":"8530989","profile":{"customerProfileId":"507869879","customerPaymentProfileId":"512588514"},"refId":"12345","messages":{"resultCode":"Ok","message":[{"code":"I00001","text":"Successful."}]}}

And the error

   raise JSONDecodeError("Unexpected UTF-8 BOM (decode using utf-8-sig)",
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Unexpected UTF-8 BOM (decode using utf-8-sig): line 1 column 1 (char 0)

I have tried both json.loads(r.text) and r.json()

I see that the error wants me to decode, but where?

Tyler Aldrich · Accepted Answer · 2022-11-10T19:42:55.260

2

As the error points out, the data should be decoded using utf-8-sig instead of the default utf-8 decoding.

something like this:

decoded_data = r.text.encode().decode('utf-8-sig')
return json.loads(decoded_data)

would probably work to load this data into a dictionary.

Edit:

Setting

r.encoding = 'utf-8-sig'

before running r.json() should also fix this.

edited Nov 10 '22 at 19:42

answered Nov 10 '22 at 19:37

Tyler Aldrich

386
2
10

2

Or set `r.encoding = 'utf-8-sig'` most likely – ChatterOne Nov 10 '22 at 19:41
1

Good point @ChatterOne thanks - I updated my answer to include this – Tyler Aldrich Nov 10 '22 at 19:43

Cannot turn response.text into a dictionary in Python

1 Answers1