REST API Call ---Extract Value from Specific Key from Response

Python Help
1 
response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers, data=payload, verify=False)

My response variable contains a response from an HTTP request and I need to extract the ID value under the Items array.

{'links': {'self': 'https://10.163.1.43/api/fmc_config/v1/domain/e276abec-e0f2-11e3-8169-6d9ed49b625f/devices/devicerecords?offset=0&limit=25&filter=name:Test-FTD&expanded=true'}, **'items': [{'deploymentStatus': 'DEPLOYMENT_PENDING', 'id': 'adab761e-9668-11ee-abae-e49d35beb127'**, 'type': 'Device', 'links': {'self': 'https://10.163.1.43/api/fmc_config/v1/domain/e276abec-e0f2-11e3-8169-6d9ed49b625f/devices/devicerecords/adab761e-9668-11eember': '78', 'modelType': 'Sensor', 'healthStatus': 'red', 'healthMessage': 'Cisco Cloud Configuration - SSE enrollment failure. ', 'sw_version': 
'7.2.5', 'healthPolicy': {'id': 'dbe98880-32e2-11ed-917a-e6821804acf4', 'type': 'HealthPolicy', 'name': 'Initial_Health_Policy 2022-09-12 21:35:45'}, 'accessPolicy': {'name': 'Test-Policy', 'id': '0050568a-7152-0ed3-0000-012884920695', 'type': 'AccessPolicy'}, 'advanced': {'enableOGS': False}, 'hostName': '10.160.5.6', 'license_caps': ['BASE', 'THREAT'], 'keepLocalEvents': False, 'prohibitPacketTransfer': True, 'isConnected': True, 'ftdMode': 'ROUTED', 'analyticsOnly': False, 'deviceGroup': {'id': '95c4f0e4-a1b7-11ed-b5ed-82df665b6681', 'type': 'DeviceGroup', 'name': 'US'}, 'metadata': {'readOnly': {'state': False}, 'inventoryData': {'cpuCores': '1 CPU (4 cores)', 'cpuType': 'CPU Atom C3000 series 2200 MHz', 'memoryInMB': '2824 MB RAM'}, 'deviceSerialNumber': 'JAD2749031Y', 'domain': {'name': 'Global', 'id': 'e276abec-e0f2-11e3-8169-6d9ed49b625f', 'type': 'Domain'}, 'isMultiInstance': False, 'snortVersion': '3.1.21.500-21', 'vdbVersion': 'Build 353 - 2022-03-07 22:13:19.0', 'lspVersion': 'lsp-rel-20240117-1601', 'clusterBootstrapSupported': False}, 'snortEngine': 'SNORT3'}], 'paging': {'offset': 0, 'limit': 25, 'count': 1, 'pages': 1}}

I am sorta new to coding so any help is much appreciated.

2

The response you are seeing is JSON-formatted data. Use the .json method of the response to parse it; the documentation shows an example right at the top.

Once you have parsed JSON data, you have a perfectly ordinary nested structure of perfectly ordinary Python dicts and lists (we don’t call them “arrays” in Python, although the JSON format description does), which you work with exactly the same way as if you had gotten that data by any other means.

So, suppose we have done something like:

data = requests.get(url, headers=headers, data=payload, verify=False).json()

Now data is a dict that has a 'links' key, where the value is another dict that has the 'items' key that you’re interested in; then the value there is a list, and then each element (although in this case there happens to be exactly one element) is a dict with an 'id' key.) To access that, we simply step through those keys and elements, one at a time: data['links']['items'][0]['id'].

That is, assuming I read it correctly :wink: (As a side note: please don’t try to add bold highlighting inside a code block on the forum - it doesn’t work, and just leaves extra asterisks in place that can cause confusion.)

But before we can write the code, we must carefully consider what the code should do if the list doesn’t contain exactly one element. The API designer made the JSON data use an array here (which turns into a list in the Python result) for a reason. Presumably, there could be more than one item, or no items at all (which is presumably also why the key is named 'items', and not 'item'). So - if you want all the "ID"s from the items, you could use a list comprehension, or write a loop, to process the list of items. If you want a specific one, you could index in normally. If you want to make sure there’s exactly one element first (and maybe raise an exception otherwise), then do that. Etc.

3

Karl,

Thank you so much for taking the time walk me through that. I appreciate the explanation of the distinction between JSON data types and Python data types. And yes, I did notice the “Bold” feature did not work as intended. You probably know my intention was to highlight the elements I was interesting in obtaining from the result. Next time I will just leave it as a simple code block. I will take what you explained and work on this today and reply back with my results…successful results!!..lol