Question

I’m trying POST a check-in request in Google Places API. The way they described it, I have to request this –

POST https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/check-in/json?sensor=true_or_false&key=AddYourOwnKeyHere HTTP/1.1
Host: maps.googleapis.com

{
  "reference": "place_reference"
}

My Current code looks like this –

def checkin(self, reference="", sensor="true"):
    """
    """
    base_url = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/check-in/json"
    params = urllib.urlencode(
            {
                'key': self.API_KEY,
                'sensor': sensor,
            }
        )
    post_url = base_url + "?" + params
    headers = { 'Host': "maps.googleapis.com" }
    data = urllib.urlencode({ 'reference': reference })
    req = Request(post_url, data, headers)

    response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
    resp = response.read()

But I keep getting the error –

urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Your problem is that the API is expecting JSON when you are sending it the literal reference: xyz

You need to send it the JSON representation.

Try:

data = json.dumps({'reference': reference})