3. Testing the TasteDive API

TasteDive is a tool that:

helps you discover new music, movies, TV shows, books, authors, games, podcasts, and people with shared interests. – TasteDive

In the following exercise, we will use the TasteDive API to search for works or artists similar to another of our choice. The documentation for the TasteDive API.

In this case, we will use the requests library to make the API request. The base url is "https://tastedive.com/api/similar". To this url, a parameter q with the value of the artist Ariana Grande will be passed. Finally, the url will look like this: "https://tastedive.com/api/similar?q=ariana+grande". Note that after the base url, a ? is written to indicate that the parameters follow.

import requests import json api_url = "https://tastedive.com/api/similar" proxy = "https://cors.bridged.cc/" # The parameters that will be passed to the url are written inside a dictionary parameters = {"q": "ariana grande"} # We request the data from the api response = requests.get(proxy + api_url, params=parameters) # Now we print the url print(response.url) print() # We transform the json-formatted data to Python data data = json.loads(response.text) print(data)

In the previous example, you could see that the API returns text, which if passed through json.loads transforms into a Python dictionary. However, it is not entirely readable. This can be solved with json.dumps.

Now, we will request information about the band Coldplay. This time we will print the data in a readable format. We will use urllib to make the request.

import urllib.request import urllib.parse import json api_url = "https://tastedive.com/api/similar?" proxy = "https://cors.bridged.cc/" # The following line is for the url parameters parameters = urllib.parse.urlencode({"q": "coldplay"}) request = urllib.request.urlopen(proxy + api_url + parameters) data = json.loads(request.read()) # We print the data in a user-readable format print(json.dumps(data, indent=4)) # We can see that the api returned 20 results related to the request print(len(data["Similar"]["Results"]))

The following exercise comes with automatic grading.

Now we will ask TasteDive for the movie Coco. Then the dictionary parameters should have the value "Coco" assigned to the key "q". Additionally, this time we only want 5 results instead of 20. For this, there is a parameter called "limit", which can be assigned to the number of results needed. Another parameter that will be passed to the url will be "info" and its value will be 1. This will make the results come with extra text with information about the movie.

First, you will request from the API what was described above, and save this in the variable request. In another variable, request_url, save the url of the request. Then, assign the data to the variable data. Next, assign the variable results the number of results that the request returned (as was done in the previous example). Because we set a limit, this number should match the limit.

Now, you will create the list similar_movies. Inside data you have a dictionary of dictionaries and lists. What you will do is to search through the sets within which are the names of the movies similar to Coco, and you will add the names of those movies to similar_movies. There should be 5 in total. Hint: the movie data is located within data["Similar"]["Results"], and the key to access it is "Name".

Lastly, you will search for the number of times the word "Pixar" appears in the information texts of the movies related to Coco. You will save that number in the variable pixar. Hint: "wTeaser" is the key that stores the text. This key is located in the same dictionary as the movie names.

import requests import json api_url = "https://tastedive.com/api/similar" proxy = "https://cors.bridged.cc/" # Add the parameters parameters = {} # Complete the code request = request_url = data = # Assign the variable results # print(f"results: {results}") # Create similar_movies # Use a for loop to find the similar movies and add them # to the corresponding variable # print(f"Movies: {similar_movies} len: {len(similar_movies)}") pixar = 0 # Find the number of occurrences of "Pixar" within the data # print(f"Pixar: {pixar}") ==== from unittest.gui import TestCaseGui class myTests(TestCaseGui): def testOne(self): self.assertEqual( request_url, "https://cors.bridged.cc/https://tastedive.com/api/similar?q=Coco&limit=5&info=1", "Testing that the url is: https://cors.bridged.cc/https://tastedive.com/api/similar?q=Coco&limit=5&info=1", ) self.assertEqual(results, 5, "Testing that results is assigned correctly.") self.assertEqual(len(similar_movies), 5, "Testing that similar_movies are: 5") self.assertEqual( similar_movies, ["Toy Story 3", "Finding Nemo", "Inside Out", "Spirited Away", "Monsters, Inc."], "Expected: ['Toy Story 3', 'Finding Nemo', 'Inside Out', 'Spirited Away', 'Monsters, Inc.']", ) self.assertEqual(pixar, 5, "Testing that pixar is assigned correctly.") myTests().main()

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