Download file from GitLab using Python HTTP requests

Question

I'd like to download a YAML file from Gitlab using Python requests. I'm almost there, but I havent quite got to the cigar stage.

I am doing the following :-

GITLAB_FILE ="https://my_url/api/v4/projects/my_id/repository/files/path_and_filename.yaml/raw?ref=master&private_token=mytoken"
g=requests.request("GET", GITLAB_FILE, verify=False)
print(g.json())

Now, it all works in as much as I can get to the file ok, but when it comes to accessing the data the print(g.json()) throws an error, but then continues to print out the file contents as I'd hoped. The error is :-

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/myproj/edm/lib/python3.7/site-packages/requests/models.py", line 910, in json
    return complexjson.loads(self.text, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/json/__init__.py", line 348, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/json/decoder.py", line 337, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/json/decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./http_test.py", line 73, in <module>
    print (g.json())
  File "/home/myproj/edm/lib/python3.7/site-packages/requests/models.py", line 917, in json
    raise RequestsJSONDecodeError(e.msg, e.doc, e.pos)
  requests.exceptions.JSONDecodeError: [Errno Expecting value] 

Once this is printed, it then proceeds to print out the contents of my yaml file correctly.

I suspect its something to do with the

print(g.json()) 

expecting a json format, and encountering a yaml file?

Any pointers as to how I can get the file contents error free would be helpful.

Answer 1

I've answered my own question.

Quite simply instead of

print(g.json())

I used

print(g.text)

Which did exactly what it said on the tin.