python_repos.py

[tianlpark]

Hi Eric,
I am reading your Python Crash Course and am currently at Chapter 17, Working with APIs.

For the python_repos.py example, I wanted to use the following code:
description = repo_dict.get('description', 'No description provided')
Instead of:
description = repo_dict['description']
if not description:
description = 'No description provided.'
But this gives me an error code:
"NoneType" object has not attribute 'decode'.

Why is this?

Thank you!

Best,
Tian

[ehmatthes]

Hi @tianlpark,

If you print the dictionary, you'll find this entry as part of the dictionary:

'description': None,

So the key 'description' is in the dictionary. When you run

description = repo_dict.get('description', 'No description provided')

Python grabs the value associated with the key 'description', which is None. This is different than the key not being there. It's a subtle issue, and I'm happy to explain that more carefully if it's not clear.

By the way, here's the code snippet I used to figure out why you were getting that error:

names, plot_dicts = [], []
for repo_dict in repo_dicts:
    names.append(repo_dict['name'])

    # Get the project description, if one is available.
    # description = repo_dict['description']
    # if not description:
    #     description = "No description provided."
    description = repo_dict.get('description', 'blah')
    if not description:
    	print('dict:', repo_dict)
    	print('description:', description)