Handling varying API response Dtype

Question

Given a basic API call -

response = requests.post(url, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(key, secret), headers=headers, data=d)
return(response.json())

How would you handle the response if the Dtype varied? E.g., sometimes json, sometimes .xlsx [binary]?

Context: I want to create a function that tests 3x criteria:

1. Response is JSON object containing percent_complete - if TRUE, then the percent_complete value is used to add to a progress bar. This apir_response tells me the requested data isn't ready yet and takes percent_complete value to update a progress bar.
2. Response is JSON object containing meta - if TRUE, then the requested data has been returned as a JSON object, and api_response should be returned, ready to be used in another function.
3. Response is an .xlsx file (binary??) - if TRUE, then the requested data has been returned in .xlsx format, and api_response should be returned, ready for use in another function.

Any suggestions would be welcome?

Answer 1

You could use try and except for that:

response = requests.post(url, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(key, secret), headers=headers, data=d)

try:
    data = response.json()
    # No exceptions here means that we get and parse valid json
    if 'percent_complete' in data:
        """Handle option 1 here."""

    elif 'meta' in data:
        """Handle option 2 here."""

    else:
        # Unknown format, so return None
        return None
except:
    # Data is non json, as exception occured
    """Try handling option 3 here by accessing `response.content`."""