Calling a REST API in R - r

Question

I recently discovered the dataforseo api and tryed to call it via R
library(httr)
username <- 'mygmailadress#gmail.com'
password <- 'mypassword'
dataforseo_api <- POST('https://api.dataforseo.com/v2/op_tasks_post/$data',
authenticate(username,password),
body = list(grant_type = 'client_credentials'),
type = "basic",
verbose()
)
This is the message I have received:
<- HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
<- Server: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
<- Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2018 13:31:34 GMT
<- Content-Type: application/json
<- Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<- Connection: keep-alive
<- WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Rest Server"
<- Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
<- Expires: 0
<- Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
<- Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST, GET, OPTIONS
<- Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Access-Control-Allow-Headers, Authorization, X-Requested-With
Do you know where my issue should come? Can you please help?

Answer 1

It looks like you're improperly configuring config. I don't see a config= in your code. The body is also not encoded correctly.
Also, in the API documentation I don't see anything about grant_type. It looks like an array of tasks should go there, e.g. something like:
{882394209: {'site': 'ranksonic.com', 'crawl_max_pages': 10}}
Response:
{'results_count': 1, 'results_time': '0.0629 sec.', 'results': {'2308949': {'post_id': 2308949, 'post_site': 'ranksonic.com',
'task_id': 882394209, 'status': 'ok'}}, 'status': 'ok'}
OK, so first off we need set_config or config=:
username <- 'Hack-R#stackoverflow.com' # fake email
password <- 'vxnyM9s7FAKESeIO' # fake password
set_config(authenticate(username,password), override = TRUE)
GET("https://api.dataforseo.com/v2/cmn_se")
Response [https://api.dataforseo.com/v2/cmn_se]
Date: 2018-07-08 16:20
Status: 200
Content-Type: application/json
Size: 551 kB
{
"status": "ok",
"results_time": "0.0564 sec.",
"results_count": 2187,
"results": [
{
"se_id": 37,
"se_name": "google.com.af",
"se_country_iso_code": "AF",
"se_country_name": "Afghanistan",
...
GET("https://api.dataforseo.com/v2/cmn_se/$country_iso_code")
Response [https://api.dataforseo.com/v2/cmn_se/$country_iso_code]
Date: 2018-07-08 15:48
Status: 200
Content-Type: application/json
Size: 100 B
{
"status": "ok",
"results_time": "0.0375 sec.",
"results_count": 0,
"results": []
GET("https://api.dataforseo.com/v2/cmn_se/$op_tasks_post")
Response [https://api.dataforseo.com/v2/cmn_se/$op_tasks_post]
Date: 2018-07-08 16:10
Status: 200
Content-Type: application/json
Size: 100 B
{
"status": "ok",
"results_time": "0.0475 sec.",
"results_count": 0,
"results": []
That was one thing. Also to POST data they need you to specify it as json, e.g. encode = "json". From their docs:
All POST data should be sent in the JSON format (UTF-8 encoding). The
keywords are sent by POST method passing tasks array. The data should
be specified in the data field of this POST array. We recommend to
send up to 100 tasks at a time.
Further:
The task setting is done using POST method when array of tasks is sent to
the data field. Each of the array elements has the following
structure:
then it goes on to list 2 required fields and many optional ones.
Note also that you can use reset_config() after as a better practice. If you're going to be running this a lot, sharing it, or using more than 1 computer I would also suggest to put your credentials in environment variables instead of your script for security and ease.
Another final word of advice is that you may want to just leverage their published Python client library and large compilation of examples. Since every new API request is something you'll be pioneering in R without their support, it may pay off to just do the data collection in Python.
This is an interesting API. If you get over to the Open Data Stack Exchange you should consider sharing it with that community.