have request.get_json() return an error message

[ctiller15]

Request.get_json(), (or a new function), should return some sort of error message if the force parameter is not used notifying the user that this method only functions if the mime type is application/json unless the force option is used.

• in endpoint:

parsed_json = request.get_json() # Currently returns None
parsed_json.get("key") # Errors out

Alternatively, current usage can look like this:

parsed_json = request.get_json() # None
key_value = parsed_json.get("key", None)
if key_value:
    # do stuff
else:
    # do other stuff

In most scenarios there would be a failure at some stage or some form of custom handling for the current None behavior. Given that the function expects that application/json is in use it seems reasonable to enforce that expectation at some level.

To be totally fair, this would be a breaking change to anyone relying on the current None behavior so it would also be great if some sort of get_json_strict() existed with similar functionality. The end goal here is to just have some default visibility around this particular behavior of get_json().

This would affect

werkzeug/src/werkzeug/wrappers/request.py

Line 540 in 8292df2

def get_json(

[davidism]

It is documented to return None. I don't plan to change that behavior. You can subclass and override Request.get_json to use whatever behavior you want.

[davidism]

Hmm, on second thought, maybe I could transition to force=True with a deprecation period. During deprecation, if get_json is called without a correct content type, and force=False wasn't explicitly set, then it would show a DeprecationWarning. I'll have to think about how disruptive this might be though.

[davidism]

I'll try it out in 2.1 and see how it goes.

[davidism]

Never mind, setting force=True is not the right thing, that would always allow users to make requests without the right content type, which is a step backwards. You're asking for a new thing where force=False becomes an error, so basically removing force completely and not returning None on missing content type.

[davidism]

I could remove force, and make silent=True mean "return None if wrong content type". But that doesn't feel right either, there is a difference between ignoring an incorrect content type and silencing parsing errors (which also seems like a bad option to ever make available).

[davidism]

This works the same for form data, if the content type isn't application/json or application/x-www-form-urlencoded, then an empty dict is returned for request.files. The problem seems to be that it is much easier to forget to pass the application/json content type with JavaScript, since jQuery, fetch, XHR, etc. don't have special support for sending JSON data. Python tools like httpx or requests, and even the Werkzeug test client, have a json parameter that does this automatically.

I think the most we can do is log a warning if the content type is incorrect.

[davidism]

I think that it's ok to have a difference between form parsing returning silently and JSON parsing failing with a 400 error. As I pointed out, it's much more common for clients to not set a JSON content type. Since that behavior is such a common source of confusion, returning an informative 400 error will make it easier to understand and fix the issue.