Pure API: Uploading files Pure API: Uploading files

Introduction

A common mistake when uploading files to Pure is bad usage of mime type headers.

Pure currently only supports uploading one file at a time, with a specific mime type. Pure does not understand upload data with content-type set to multipart/....

Code libraries (like Python requests) support uploading both raw files and multipart. It also supports manually setting the content-type on a PUT request to e.g. image/jpeg.

Requirements

• Pure Admin Account 
• Valid API Key 
• API Documentation
• Python

Expertise Level

Knowledge of Python is required. See also Python API Requests: Fundamental Coding Examples 

Examples

There are three typical combinations of doing this (examples shown below):

Example 1: WORKS. 

In this example, we set the content-type header to image/jpeg on the put request and add the raw image binary data, using the data parameter in the requests.put(...) function.

Example 2: DOES NOT WORK

In this example we do not set a header on the PUT request and we are using the files parameter in the requests.put(...) function. In this case, the requests library will automatically add the multipart/... header. Pure will see this header and return an HTTP error code 400 with an error description.

Example 3: DOES NOT WORK. 

In this example we set the content-type header to image/jpeg on the PUT request and add multipart data, using the files parameter in the requests.put(...) function. In this case, the requests library will not automatically set the content-type to multipart/..., as it is manually set. Pure will accept the content-type header image/jpeg and upload the binary data as an image. Since the multipart/... header data is included in the data, the file is unable to be shown as an image.

Only example 1 works. Example 2 will fail with an error message when trying, but example 3 will fail silently and upload a corrupted image file.

Python examples

The three examples mentioned in the section above are shown here, written in Python.

import requests

photo_file_path = "../resources/upload_test.jpg"

with open(photo_file_path, 'rb') as file:

    ################################################################################
    # Example 1: Works. Binary file upload.
    headers = {
        "accept": "application/json",
        "api-key": "insert here",
        "content-type": "image/jpeg"
    }
    response = requests.put("<server URL>/ws/api/persons/file-uploads", headers=headers, data=file)
    print("Response code:", response.status_code)
    print("Response text:", response.text)



    ################################################################################
    # Example 2: DOES NOT WORK. It will return error code 400 with an error description.
    headers = {
        "accept": "application/json",
        "api-key": "insert here"
        # Omitting the multipart/form-data header, as the "requests" library will automatically add it.
    }
    files = {'file': (photo_file_path, file, 'image/jpeg')} # Multipart specification
    response = requests.put("<server URL>/ws/api/persons/file-uploads", headers=headers, files=files)
    print("Response code:", response.status_code)
    print("Response text:", response.text)



    ################################################################################
    # Example 3: DOES NOT WORK. The request will go through as mime type is forced to be "image/jpeg", but the uploaded
    # JPEG file will be corrupted, as the multipart header (that Python adds when using "files=...") will be considered part
    # of the binary data of the image.
    headers = {
        "accept": "application/json",
        "api-key": "insert here",
        "content-type": "image/jpeg" # Forcing the mimetype to "image/jpeg".
    }
    files = {'file': (photo_file_path, file, 'image/jpeg')} # Multipart specification
    response = requests.put("<server URL>/ws/api/persons/file-uploads", headers=headers, files=files)
    print("Response code:", response.status_code)
    print("Response text:", response.text)