LAB 2 — Intro to HTTP & APIs with Python

# Import the requests library - this allows us to make HTTP requests to web servers
import requests
# Import the json library - this helps us format JSON data nicely for display
import json

# Store the URL of the API endpoint we want to request. This is a public test API.
url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1"

# Make an HTTP GET request to the URL and store the response object returned by the server
response = requests.get(url)

# Display the HTTP status code (200 means the request was successful)
print("Status Code:", response.status_code)
# Display the raw JSON response as a text string (before we parse it into Python objects)
print("Raw Response:", response.text)

# Parse the JSON text from the response into a Python dictionary we can work with
data = response.json()

# Access specific fields from the dictionary and print them. data["title"] gets the title field.
print("Parsed Title:", data["title"])
# Access the body field from the dictionary
print("Parsed Body:", data["body"])

# Convert the entire dictionary back to JSON and print it with nice formatting (2-space indentation)
print(json.dumps(data, indent=2))

# Import the requests library so we can make HTTP requests
import requests

# Define a function that fetches a random Chuck Norris joke from an API
def get_joke():
    # Store the URL of the API endpoint that returns random jokes
    url = "https://api.chucknorris.io/jokes/random"
    # Make a GET request to the API with a timeout of 10 seconds (prevents hanging forever)
    r = requests.get(url, timeout=10)

    # Check if the request was successful (status code 200 means OK)
    if r.status_code == 200:
        # Parse the JSON response into a Python dictionary
        joke = r.json()
        # Return just the joke text from the "value" key in the dictionary
        return joke["value"]
    else:
        # If the request failed, return an error message instead of trying to parse JSON
        return f"Error: status={r.status_code}"

# Loop 3 times (i takes values 0, 1, 2)
for i in range(3):
    # Call get_joke() three times and print each joke returned
    print(get_joke())

# Open a file named jokes_output.txt in write mode ("w" creates it or overwrites if it exists)
# encoding="utf-8" ensures special characters are saved correctly
# The 'with' statement automatically closes the file when done, even if an error occurs
with open("jokes_output.txt", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    # Loop 5 times to fetch and save 5 jokes
    for i in range(5):
        # Call get_joke() to fetch a joke, concatenate a newline character (\n), and write to file
        f.write(get_joke() + "\n")

# Import the requests library for making HTTP requests
import requests

# Store the URL endpoint where we want to create a new post
url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
# Create a dictionary containing the data for the new post
payload = {
    "title": "ITC 2310 Sample",        # The title of the new post
    "body": "Hello world!",            # The body/content of the new post
    "userId": 1                        # The ID of the user creating the post
}

# Create a headers dictionary that tells the server we're sending JSON data
headers = {"Content-Type": "application/json"}

# Make an HTTP POST request to create a new resource on the server
# json=payload automatically converts the dictionary to JSON and sends it
# headers=headers sends our Content-Type header
resp = requests.post(url, json=payload, headers=headers)

# Print the HTTP status code (201 means Created, indicating success)
print("Status:", resp.status_code)
# Parse the JSON response and print it (the server typically echoes back the data it created)
print("Response JSON:", resp.json())