how to use the curl POST function in Linux terminal to create a document in python

Question

Am trying to add a new record into a python document and I think am stuck with an issue caused by the curl post function. I have attached the python file and the error received when posting to my url. Could anyone kindly point me towards the right direction.

I dont understand the error code to identify whether the problem comes from the python code bu I do suspect an issue with the curl url.

#!/usr/bin/python
import json
from bson import json_util
from bson.json_util import dumps
import bottle
from bottle import route, run, request, abort
#imports for database
from pymongo import MongoClient
connection = MongoClient('localhost', 27017)
db = connection['city']
collection = db['inspections']

# set up URI paths for REST service
@route('/hello', method='GET')
def get_hello():
    word = '"'+request.GET.get('name', None)+'"'
    string="{hello:"+word+"}"
    return json.loads(json.dumps(string, indent=4, default=json_util.default))

@route('/strings', method='POST')
def run_post():
    first = '"'+request.json.get('string1')+'"'
    second = '"'+request.json.get('string2')+'"'
    data="{first:"+first+",second:"+ second+"}"
    return json.loads(json.dumps(data, indent=4, default=json_util.default))


@route('/create', method='POST')
def run_create(): 
    myid = request.json.get('id')
    print(myid)
    cert_number = request.json.get('certificate_number')
    bus_name = request.json.get('business_name')
    date = request.json.get('date')
    result = request.json.get('result')
    sector = request.json.get('sector')
    added_id = collection.insert({"id":myid,"certificate_number":cert_number,"business_name":bus_name,"date":date,"result":result,"sector":sector})
    added_doc = collection.find_one({"_id":added_id})
    return json.loads(json.dumps(added_doc, indent=4, default=json_util.default))

#url does not allow spacing when passing an argument,
#therefore i use underscores when passing the business_name and the remove them
#when creating the query
@route('/read', method='GET')
def get_read():
    word = request.params.get('business_name')
    word = word.replace("_"," ")
    found_doc = collection.find({"business_name":{'$regex':word}}) #will still get results when user pass parameter with white space
    return dumps(found_doc)

@route('/update', method='GET')
def get_update(rslt = "Violation Issued"):
    myid = request.query.id
    query = { "id" :myid}
    new_update =  { "$set":{"result":rslt}}
    collection.update_one(query,new_update)
    updated_doc = collection.find_one({"id":myid})
    return json.loads(json.dumps(updated_doc, indent=4, default=json_util.default))

@route('/delete', method='GET')
def get_update():
    myid = request.query.id
    query = {"id" :myid};
    print(query)
    result = collection.delete_one(query)
    return "document with id "+myid+" Has beed deleted from the City Collection"



if __name__ == '__main__':
    run(debug=True,reloader = True)
    #run(host='localhost', port=8080)

Error:

Returned HTML:

python error:

Answer 1

The Problem is that at one point in the json in your curl request you used “ instead of ". Therefore the json parser throws an error.

So instead of

"business_name" : “ACME Test INC."

write:

"business_name" : "ACME Test INC."

Answer 2

Not sure if you solved this but here we go. Jakob was correct that you used “ instead of " Next, get the values from the document you are inserting

data = request.json (Contains parsed content)

Assign a value to the variables you need such as id

id = data['id']

Store all the values in a dictionary variable (I think it is much cleaner this way)

document = {"id":myid,"certificate_number":cert_number,"business_name":bus_name,"date":date,"result":result,"sector":sector}

Lastly, use insert_one and catch errors

try:
    collection.insert_one(document)
    print("CREATED NEW DOCUMENT")

except Exception as e:
    print("ERROR: ", e)

Also, there are several ways to fix the "space" problem you mention for cURL requests. One way is to simply add a %20 between spaces like so:

ACME%20TEST%20INC.

I hope that helps.