Google Sheets API: Exception vs. Json in response body

Question

I am lost in error handling with Google Sheets API.

The Sheets API reference page does not provide any example of error handling.

This SO question points to a doc page saying:

The Drive API returns two levels of error information:

 HTTP error codes and messages in the header.

A JSON object in the response body with additional details that can help you determine how > to handle the error.

Drive apps should catch and handle all errors that might be encountered when using the REST > API. This guide provides instructions on how to resolve specific API errors.

and then lists an example of json response for 404

However when I run with a nonexistent spreadsheet_id the following code (it works fine on a correct spreadsheet_id):

request = service.spreadsheets().get(
            spreadsheetId=spreadsheet_id,
            ranges=ranges,
    )

response = request.execute()

I get an exception raised, rather than an error in json response:

  File ".../lib/python3.8/site-packages/googleapiclient/http.py", line 915, in execute
    raise HttpError(resp, content, uri=self.uri)
googleapiclient.errors.HttpError: <HttpError 404 when requesting https://sheets.googleapis.com/v4/spreadsheets/1Z2aQvO122lBxHyditlDT6KhSAqkiUeX8zqJ4ysIJHd?alt=json returned "Requested entity was not found.". Details: "Requested entity was not found.">

and it seems I can't even extract an error code without parsing a string.

So, the question is: how to correctly handle sheets api errors? I think I'd prefer to always get a json and catch an exception for truly technical errors such a bad connectivity etc.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I believe your goal and your current situation as follows.

• When an error occurs with Sheets API, you want to retrieve the error message from Sheets API as JSON data.
• You want to achieve this using googleapis with python.
• You have already been able to use Sheets API using googleapis for python.

In this case, how about using try, except? The sample script is as follows.

Sample script:

from googleapiclient.errors import HttpError # <--- In this case, please add this.

try:

    # This is your script.
    request = service.spreadsheets().get(
        spreadsheetId=spreadsheet_id,
        ranges=ranges,
    )

    response = request.execute()
    print(response)

except HttpError as err:
    e = json.loads(err.content.decode("utf-8"))
    print(e)

• In this sample script, when spreadsheet_id is the valid value, the returned value can be seen with print(response) . When spreadsheet_id is the invalid value, the error message can be seen with print(e) . The sample value of print(e) is as follows.

   {'error': {'status': 'NOT_FOUND', 'message': 'Requested entity was not found.', 'code': 404, 'errors': [{'domain': 'global', 'message': 'Requested entity was not found.', 'reason': 'notFound'}]}}

Note:

• In this sample script, it supposes that your service can be used for retrieving the values from Google Spreadsheet using Sheets API. Please be careful this.

Reference:

• googleapis for python

Answer 2

The "requested entity not found" error is normally caused by sending an invalid spreadsheetId.

You should check that the user who you have authenticated with actually has access to the sheet first. doing a file.list and searching for the mime type of sheets would be a good way to do that try me