Targeting specific values from JSON API and inserting into Postgresql, using Python

Question:

Right now i am able to connect to the url api and my database. I am trying to insert data from the url to the postgresql database using psycopg2. I dont fully understand how to do this, and this is all i could come up with to do this.

import urllib3
import json
import certifi
import psycopg2
from psycopg2.extras import Json


http = urllib3.PoolManager(
    cert_reqs='CERT_REQUIRED',
    ca_certs=certifi.where())
url = '<API-URL>'
headers = urllib3.util.make_headers(basic_auth='<user>:<passowrd>')
r = http.request('GET', url, headers=headers)
data = json.loads(r.data.decode('utf-8'))


def insert_into_table(data):

    for item in data['issues']:
        item['id'] = Json(item['id'])

    with psycopg2.connect(database='test3', user='<username>', password='<password>', host='localhost') as conn:
        with conn.cursor() as cursor:
            query = """
                INSERT into
                     Countries
                    (revenue)
                VALUES
                    (%(id)s);
            """
            cursor.executemany(query, data)

        conn.commit()


insert_into_table(data)

So this code give me a TypeError: string indices must be integers on cursor.executemany(query, data)

So i know that json.loads brings back a type object and that json.dumps brings a type string . I wasn’t sure which one i should be using. and i know i am completely missing something on how im targeting the ‘id’ value, and inserting it into the query.

Also a little about the API, it is very large and complex and eventually i’ll have to go down multiple trees to grab certain values, here is an example of what i’m pulling from.

I am trying to grab “id” under “issues” and not “issue type”

{
  "expand": "<>",
  "startAt": 0,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "total": 13372,
  "issues": [
    {
      "expand": "<>",
      "id": "41508",
      "self": "<>",
      "key": "<>",
      "fields": {
        "issuetype": {
          "self": "<>",
          "id": "1",
          "description": "<>",
          "iconUrl": "<>",
          "name": "<>",
          "subtask": <>,
          "avatarId": <>
        },
Asked By: Mfreeman

||

Answers:

If you’re trying to get just the id and insert it into your table, you should try

ids = []
for i in data['issues']:
     ids.append(i['id'])

Then you can pass your ids list to you cursor.executemany function.

Answered By: Giovana Morais

The issue you have is not in the way you are parsing your JSON, it occurs when you try to insert it into your table using cursor.executemany().

data is a single object, Are you attempting to insert all of the data your fetch returns into your table all at once? Or are you trying to insert a specific part of the data (a list of issue IDs)?

You are passing data into your cursor.executemany call. data is an object. I believe you wish to pass data.issues which is the list of issues that you modified.

If you only wish to insert the ids into the table try this:

def insert_into_table(data):

    with psycopg2.connect(database='test3', user='<username>', password='<password>', host='localhost') as conn:
        with conn.cursor() as cursor:
            query = """
            INSERT into
                 Countries
                (revenue)
            VALUES
                (%(id)s);
            """
            for item in data['issues']:
               item['id'] = Json(item['id'])
               cursor.execute(query, item['id')

            conn.commit()


insert_into_table(data)

If you wish keep the efficiency of using cursor.executemany() You need create an array of the IDs, as the current object structure doesn’t arrange them the way the cursor.executemany() requires.

Answered By: Josh Sharkey

First, extract ids into a list of tuples:

ids = list((item['id'],) for item in data['issues'])
# example ids: [('41508',), ('41509',)]

Next use the function extras.execute_values():

from psycopg2 import extras

query = """
    INSERT into Countries (revenue)
    VALUES %s;
"""
extras.execute_values(cursor, query, ids)

Why I was getting type errors?

The second argument of the function executemany(query, vars_list) should be a sequence while data is an object which elements cannot be accessed by integer indexes.

Why to use execute_values() instead of executemany()?

Because of performance, the first function executes a single query with multiple arguments, while the second one executes as many queries as arguments.

Note, that by default the third argument of execute_values() is a list of tuples, so we extracted ids just in this way.

If you have to insert values into more than one column, each tuple in the list should contain all the values for a single inserted row, example:

values = list((item['id'], item['key']) for item in data['issues'])

query = """
    INSERT into Countries (id, revenue)
    VALUES %s;
"""
extras.execute_values(cur, query, values)
Answered By: klin