Python: how to check whether Google street view API returns no image or the API key is expired?

Question

I am using the Google Street View API for downloading some images in Python. What happening is sometimes there is no image return in one area, but the API key can be used.

Some other time, I am getting the API key is expired or invalid, and also cannot return the image.

The Google Maps API server denied your request. The provided API key is expired.

How to identify these two situations with code in Python?

Answer 1

What you can do is simply generate an API call with the requests package, and parse the JSON response:

import requests

URL = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/streetview?size=600x300&location=46.414382,10.013988&heading=151.78&pitch=-0.76&key=YOUR_API_KEY'

r = requests.get(url)

results = r.json()

error_message = results.get('error_message')

Now error_message variable will be the text of the error message (e.g., 'The provided API key is expired.'), or will be None if there is no error message. 

if error_message and 'The provided API key is invalid.' in error_message:

    do_something()

elif ...:

    do_something_else()

It will be better if you also check the key 'status' so that you can see if the request was successful or not:

status = results.get('status')

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