json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

[morenoh149]

I have a script

import httpx

url = f"https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/users/morenoh149"
response = httpx.get(url)
data = response.json()

I get this error

python try_lib.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/harrymoreno/Programming/python-scripts/download_hacker_news_comment_bios/try_lib.py", line 5, in <module>
    data = response.json()
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/harrymoreno/.local/share/virtualenvs/download_hacker_news_comment_bios-ztL6Hasn/lib/python3.11/site-packages/httpx/_models.py", line 756, in json
    return jsonlib.loads(self.text, **kwargs)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/harrymoreno/.asdf/installs/python/3.11.3/lib/python3.11/json/__init__.py", line 346, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/harrymoreno/.asdf/installs/python/3.11.3/lib/python3.11/json/decoder.py", line 337, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/harrymoreno/.asdf/installs/python/3.11.3/lib/python3.11/json/decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

What am I doing wrong?

[morenoh149]

For this api specifying a user agent fixes it

import httpx

url = f"https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/users/morenoh149"
response = httpx.get(url, headers={"User-Agent":"curl/7.72.0"})
data = response.json()

[tomchristie]

Curious that httpx is being denied access there. (Other user agents may be tried are not) Wonder how we could dig into why that might be?

[chopeen]

I am facing a similar issue. I think I am working API that returns no response on success (status code 200). Is there a way to check if .json() can be accessed?