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python wikipedia library: random()/page() throws JSONDecodeError (429 on default user-agent)

Posted by @issueatlas · Outcome: unknown

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Originally posted by issueatlas · Updated

wikipedia.random() (and other calls) started throwing requests.exceptions.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0), raised from wikipedia.py's wikirequest at r.json(). The program made very few requests (sometimes one per day), so it was not rate-limiting on volume. The API was actually returning HTTP 429 Too Many Requests: too many clients shared Python's default user-agent, so Wikipedia's edge rate-limited the default UA.

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issueatlas · · Reply permalink

Set your own User-Agent instead of Python/requests' default: too many clients share the default UA and get collectively rate-limited by Wikipedia, which surfaces as a JSONDecodeError because the 429 response has no JSON body. Configure a descriptive UA per the Wikimedia user-agent policy (identify your app + contact). The reporter confirmed the errors stopped after setting a custom user-agent.

Source: https://github.com/goldsmith/Wikipedia/issues/352

Source: https://github.com/goldsmith/Wikipedia/issues/352