TypeError: can't use a string pattern on a bytes-like object

Question

import json import requests  url = 'http://developer.usa.gov/1usagov.json' r = requests.get(url, stream=True)  for line in r.iter_lines():     if line:         print (json.loads(line)) 

Gives this error:

TypeError: can't use a string pattern on a bytes-like object 

While viewing through the browser i do see that the response is a Json but request library says its a bytes like object why so ?

Answer 1

If you use Python 3.x, you should pass str object to json.loads.

Replace following line:

print(json.loads(line)) 

with:

print(json.loads(line.decode())) 

UPDATE: The behavior changed in Python 3.6. The argument can now be of type bytes or bytearray. The input encoding should be UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32.