Django HTTP request to api

Question

So i been trying to get this to work but at the same time i do not understand some of these code means. I'm sorry for making the question so long but i want to understand how these works.

I am trying to make a HTTP request to another API to do POST and GET method using django. Based on the website code example, which is this url: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/11/build-your-own-pokedex-with-django-mms-and-pokeapi.html

As i wanted to use HTTP Request on my API to call other API, therefore i wanted to get a better understanding of how these works and how to use it.

The code is at the bottom of the website. But i will just provide the code here so it is easier for you.

website code

from django_twilio.views import twilio_view
from twilio.twiml import Response
import requests
import json

BASE_URL = 'http://pokeapi.co'

def query_pokeapi(resource_uri):
    url = '{0}{1}'.format(BASE_URL, resource_uri)
    response = requests.get(url)

    if response.status_code == 200:
        return json.loads(response.text)
    return None

@twilio_view
def incoming_message(request):
    twiml = Response()

    body = request.POST.get('Body', '')
    body = body.lower()

    pokemon_url = '/api/v1/pokemon/{0}/'.format(body)
    pokemon = query_pokeapi(pokemon_url)

    if pokemon:
        sprite_uri = pokemon['sprites'][0]['resource_uri']
        description_uri = pokemon['descriptions'][0]['resource_uri']

        sprite = query_pokeapi(sprite_uri)
        description = query_pokeapi(description_uri)

        message = '{0}, {1}'.format(pokemon['name'], description['description'])
        image = '{0}{1}'.format(BASE_URL, sprite['image'])

        frm = request.POST.get('From', '')
        if '+44' in frm:
            twiml.message('{0} {1}'.format(message, image))
            return twiml
        twiml.message(message).media(image)
        return twiml

    twiml.message("Something went wrong! Try 'Pikachu' or 'Rotom'")
    return twiml

My question is:

1. i have read about the request.POST and request.POST.get but i still don't get it. Isn't request.POST = POST method/create function ?

2. what does body.lower mean ? Cant seems to find anything about it.

3. I am very confuse about this part

    sprite_uri = pokemon['sprites'][0]['resource_uri'] description_uri = pokemon['descriptions'][0]['resource_uri'] sprite = query_pokeapi(sprite_uri) description = query_pokeapi(description_uri) 

is pokemon['sprites'] refers to the sprites field in the api ?

4. What does this even means ?

     frm = request.POST.get('From', '') if '+44' in frm: twiml.message('{0} {1}'.format(message, image)) return twiml twiml.message(message).media(image) return twiml 

request.POST.get('From', '') Isn't POST where user enter data ? Where does 'From' come from? And what does this means ? if '+44' in frm: if +44 is found in frm ?

Answer 1

ALL The questions are based on very basic python concepts, I recommend you go through python docs here Python Docs

1. Diff in request.POST and request.POST.get()

    Ex request.post has following dict {'abc_key': 'abc_value'} than request.POST['abc_key'] will give 'abc_value' but request.POST['xyz_key'] will throw error so we use default value to escape this error request.POST.get('xyz_key', "default_value") this will not give error if xyz_key is not found 

2. body.lower

   This method returns a copy of the string in which all case-based characters have been lowercased.

   check this link lower()

3. pokemon['sprites'][0]['resource_uri'] this is serching in pokemon (which have dictionary values)

   Ex. pokemon = {'sprites':[{'resource_uri': 'res_value'}, 1, 2, 3 ]} so pokemon['sprites'][0]['resource_uri'] will give 'res_value'

4. frm = request.POST.get('From', '') same as i said in 1st point

5. if '+44' in frm:
   this will return True if string '+44' is substring in frm variable(string)