Bad Request from Yelp API

Question

Inspired by this Yelp tutorial, I created a script to search for all gyms in a given city. I tweaked the script with these updates in order to return ALL gyms, not just the first 20. You can find the gist here. The SEARCH_LIMIT is 20.

I'm encountering a Bad Request error. I followed the Yelp Tutorial pretty closely, and am unsure of what it can be coming from -- I'm pretty sure the request is properly encoded, and all my API keys are right.

The print out is below:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "YelpSearch.py", line 97, in <module>
    query_api()
  File "YelpSearch.py", line 74, in query_api
    response = search_yelp(offset) 
  File "YelpSearch.py", line 67, in search_yelp
    return request(API_HOST, SEARCH_PATH, url_params=url_params)
  File "YelpSearch.py", line 53, in request
    conn = urllib2.urlopen(signed_url, None)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 127, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 410, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 523, in http_response
    'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 448, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 382, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 531, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)
urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request

Answer 1

In example search params they replace spaces with + sign:

'term': term.replace(' ', '+'),
'location': location.replace(' ', '+'),

In your gist you have hardcoded location as: 'New York, NY', changing spaces to + should help.

Answer 2

Yelp API has limitations. You can get maximum 20 items for each request. Also, quantity of accessible items is 1000. I can't find information about limitations on the documentation. But, I found info about these limitations on the support group. Based on this you can get maximum 1000 items for 50 requests([1,..., 20], [21,..., 40], ... [981,..., 1000] )

Regarding your snippet you are trying get more than 1000 items. I found out that your limit and offset parameters. limit = 3, offset = 1000. It means you want to get items from 1001 to 1003. And it contradicts the documentation.

HTTP Error 400: Bad Request means you get response

{
  error: {
    field: "offset",
    description: "The maximum number of accessible results is 1000",
    id: "INVALID_PARAMETER",
    text: "One or more parameters are invalid in request"
  }
}

If you open your last signed_url on the browser you will see response like above. Also, you will see Response Status Code is 400 Bad Request.