Could not decode DNS results

[pavel-odintsov]

Hello!

I'm trying to decode this file: RIPE-Atlas-measurement-6929346.json.zip

This way:

from ripe.atlas.sagan import DnsResult

f = open('/Users/pavel/Downloads/RIPE-Atlas-measurement-6929346.json', 'r+')
contents = f.read()
my_result = DnsResult.get(contents)

But it's not working as expected:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/pavel/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ripe/atlas/sagan/base.py", line 235, in get
    kind = raw_data["type"].lower()
TypeError: list indices must be integers, not str

Could you help me?

[pavel-odintsov]

I got this data from my measurement here: https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/6929346/results?start=1478563200&stop=1478649599&format=json

[astrikos]

Hi @pavel-odintsov, you need to pass a single result in the get function. What you pass is a list like string. Try something like this:

import json
contents=json.load(contents)
result = DnsResult.get(contents[0])

The get function can understand str as well, as long as it is in the right json format. For more details you can see docs

[pavel-odintsov]

Oh, great! It's working ;) Thank a lot!

[danielquinn]

I see this sort of question a lot. Maybe it's worth considering implementing something like Result.get_list()?

[pavel-odintsov]

Yep, it will be pretty useful!

[astrikos]

@danielquinn I would put that somewhere in helpers and not on Result class. It will be misleading having method for multiple results in a class called Result. We also have the fragmented version of results. So something like the following would work nicely as well:

with open("RIPE-Atlas-measurement-6929346.json", "r") as f:
    for line in f:
        my_result = DnsResult.get(line)

where file comes from https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/6929346/results?start=1478563200&stop=1478649599&format=txt (Notice the format change to txt)

[danielquinn]

I dunno, a class method that returns multiple instances of said class isn't all that strange, and it might help with how people tend to make use of the library. I mean, this is probably the most common problem I hear from people using it: they try to pass in a JSON blob containing multiple results and don't understand what they did wrong.

Something like Result.get_multiple(<raw json>) might go a long way to fixing that. either that, or a more expressive error message that tells you what you did wrong when you pass multiple instances to .get(). Maybe the latter option is better considering the former would allow people to make some terrible mistakes in their own code.

I didn't mean to hijack the issue though, so feel free to close this. I just thought it worth mentioning as this is easily the 20th time I've heard someone make this mistake.