Python JSON POST request

Question

Different questions re: 1 script. I have to JSON-ify from a Python script that'll run on client-side and do a POST on a remote URL. I am following the docs here http://docs.python.org/2/library/httplib.html - However, I am not sure if I am doing it right. I am not getting any response-status either when I run it on my Mac. Right now, I have doubts about the following -

(1) The dummy 'device_key' (of the client) 
(2) The IP, Port listed at HTTPConnection --- I don't want to hard-code the IP, Port - should I be using "ServerHost:Port"
(3) The cpuStats is a nametuple (of 'user'= somevalue, 'idle' = somevalue, etc.) that is converted to a dict by _asdict(). I want to just send the cpuStats (namedtuple) to the URLpage.
(4) The cpu_times_percent(percpu=True) is what the docs say <http://code.google.com/p/psutil/wiki/Documentation#CPU> but when I run the script on my Mac - it shows just 1 namedtuple of cpu percentages though my mac has 4 cpus. 

I have a strong feeling that my errors extend beyond this list.

Thanks in advance.

import psutil 
import socket
import time
import sample
import json
import httplib
import urllib



serverHost = sample.host
port = sample.port

thisClient = socket.gethostname()
cpuStats = psutil.cpu_times_percent(percpu=True)
print cpuStats


currentTime = int(time.time())
s = socket.socket()
s.connect((serverHost,port))



cpuStatsjson = json.dumps(cpuStats._asdict())
params = urllib.urlencode({'cpuStats': cpuStats, 'device_key': 12345})
headers = {"Content-type": "application/json", "Accept": "text/plain"}
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:YYYY")
conn.request("POST", "", cpuStatsjson, headers)
response = conn.getresponse()
print response.status, response.reason

s.close()

Answer 1

Yes, httplib can do this probably, but I would strongly suggest something like requests

for this question to work in requests

import requests

def post_some_dict(dict):
    headers = {'Content-type': 'application/json', 'Accept': 'text/plain'}
    r = requests.post(url, data=json.dumps(dict), headers=headers)

as for your code, the socket connection is not needed I guess and the following code does post for me:

data = {"somekey": 12}
headers = {"Content-type": "application/json", "Accept": "text/plain"}
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection('xx.xx.xx.xx')
conn.request("POST", "/", json.dumps(data), headers)